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Doris Lessing Quotes
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Doris May Lessing, CH was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing , the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence , The Golden Notebook , The Good Terrorist , and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives .

Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

✵ 22. October 1919 – 17. November 2013   •   Other names Doris May Lessing, Дорис Лессинг
Doris Lessing photo
Doris Lessing: 94   quotes 23   likes

Doris Lessing Quotes

“Literature is analysis after the event.”

Doris Lessing

Quoted in Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, ed. Michael Horovitz (1969): Afterwords, section 2

Literature

“The Golden Notebook for some reason surprised people but it was no more than you would hear women say in their kitchens every day in any country. … I was really astounded that some people were shocked.”

Doris Lessing

As quoted in an undated profile at the BBC World Service http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/lessing_being.shtml

Women , People , Country

“It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.”

Doris Lessing

Denn zu einem großen Manne gehört beides: Kleinigkeiten als Kleinigkeiten, und wichtige Dinge als wichtige Dinge zu behandeln.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767 - 1769), Vierunddreißigstes Stück Den 25. August 1767 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10055/10055-8.txt
Misattributed

People

“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.”

Doris Lessing

Interview with Amanda Craig, "Grand dame of letters who's not going quietly," The Times, London (23 November 2003)
Variant: Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Thinking

“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”

Doris Lessing

The Guardian, London (7 November 1988)

Science , Time

“Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.”

Doris Lessing

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 660

“The worst of superstitions is to think
One's own most bearable.”

Doris Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise (1779), Act IV, scene II http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/natws10.txt
Variant translation: The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.
Misattributed

Thinking

“I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become.”

Doris Lessing

Rush Limbaugh, as quoted in Old Age Is Always 15 Years Older Than I Am (2001) by Randy Voorhees
Misattributed

Life

“I think it possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time, outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world-ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects, and creeds. But it was an attempt.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)

World , Religion , Thinking , Time

“Man, whence is he? / Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance.”

Doris Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 61; usually attributed to Doris Lessing in the form: "Man — who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!"
Misattributed

God , Chance

“Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all — in one way or another — obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.”

Doris Lessing

Salon interview (1997)

People , Way , Failure , Support

“There are certain types of people who are political out of a kind of religious reason […] I think it's fairly common among socialists: They are, in fact, God-seekers, looking for the kingdom of God on earth. A lot of religious reformers have been like that, too. It's the same psychological set, trying to abolish the present in favor of some better future — always taking it for granted that there is a better future. If you don't believe in heaven, then you believe in socialism. When I was in my real Communist phase, I and the people around me really believed — but, of course, this makes us certifiable — that something like 10 years after World War II, the world would be Communist and perfect.”

Doris Lessing

quoted in "Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and Space Fiction" http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/10/specials/lessing-space.html (25 July 1982), Lesley Hazelton, New York Times Book Review

God , War , People , World

“Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.”

Doris Lessing

I, who ne'er
Went for myself a begging, go a borrowing,
And that for others. Borrowing's much the same
As begging; just as lending upon usury
Is much the same as thieving.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise (1779), Act II, scene II http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/natws10.txt
Misattributed

“I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme… If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.”

Doris Lessing

"Literature Nobel Awarded to Writer Doris Lessing" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15195588 All Things Considered NPR (11 October 2007)

Thinking

“What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.”

Doris Lessing

Boston Book Review interview by Harvey Blume http://www.dorislessing.org/boston.html (February 1998)

Science , Time

“It was OK, us being Reds during the war, because we were all on the same side. But then the Cold War started. Almost overnight we became enemies of people who were close friends — they crossed the street to avoid us.”

Doris Lessing

Salon interview (1997)

War , People

“This has been going on for 30 years. I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush.”

Doris Lessing

After being chosen as the 2007 recipient of the Nobel Prize For Literature "BBC News", BBC, London (11 October 2007)

“Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.”

Doris Lessing

"Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism" http://www.dorislessing.org/unexamined.html, in Our Country, Our Culture - The Politics of Political Correctness (1994), Partisan Review Press, edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Philips

Dogs , Motivation , Idea

“Parents should leave books lying around marked "forbidden" if they want their children to read.”

Doris Lessing

Interview with Amanda Craig, "Grand dame of letters who's not going quietly," The Times, London (23 November 2003) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14449-1132868_3,00.html

Children , Books , Lying , Parent

“None of you ask for anything — except everything, but just for so long as you need it.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf
The Golden Notebook (1962)

“This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we — we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.”

Doris Lessing book The Good Terrorist

The Good Terrorist (1985)

People , World , Understanding

“Pearls mean tears.”

Doris Lessing

Perlen bedeuten Tränen.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emilia Galotti (1772), Act II, scene VIII
Misattributed

Tear

“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.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "The Golden Notebook"
The Golden Notebook (1962)

Life , Feeling , Dependency