Doris Lessing: Timing

Doris Lessing was British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Explore interesting quotes on timing.
Doris Lessing: 188   quotes 23   likes

“Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

Books , Time , Reading

“What is so painful about that time is that nothing was disastrous.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 1"
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: What is so painful about that time is that nothing was disastrous. It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then — we went on dancing. <!-- 128

Pain , Time

“Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this:
"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

Education , Way , Time

“From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then — we went on dancing.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 1"
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: What is so painful about that time is that nothing was disastrous. It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then — we went on dancing. <!-- 128

Time , Dance

“Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.”

Doris Lessing
Books , Time , Reading

“Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad.”

Doris Lessing
Learning , Time

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

Doris Lessing

The Guardian, London (7 November 1988)

Science , Time

“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

“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