Anna Wulf, in "The Golden Notebook"
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: I knew, and it was an illumination — one of those things one has always known, but never understood before — that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh.
Context: I knew, and it was an illumination — one of those things one has always known, but never understood before — that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh. If this goes, then the conviction of life goes too. But I could feel none of this. … I knew I was moving into a new dimension, further from sanity than I had ever been. <!-- p. 585

“Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Source: The Golden Notebook

“For women like me, integrity isn't chastity, it isn't fidelity, it isn't any of the old words. Integrity is the orgasm. That is something I haven't any control over.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Source: The Golden Notebook

“Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Source: The Golden Notebook

“Better Counsel comes overnight.”

Doris Lessing

Besserer Rat kommt über Nacht. <br class="br">Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emilia Galotti (1772), Act IV, scene III http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/7mlgl10.txt <br class="br">Misattributed

“What matters most is that we learn from living.”

Doris Lessing

As quoted in Permission to Play : Taking Time to Renew Your Smile (2003) by Jill Murphy Long, p. 147

“It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.”

Doris Lessing book The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983), p. 94, Flamingo edition

“The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation. It's heart-breaking how often I have to say when I'm giving talks, "This book is out of print. This book is out of print."”

Doris Lessing

It's a roll call of dead books.
Salon interview (1997)