“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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "None of you ask for anything — except everything, but just for so long as you need it." by Doris Lessing?

Doris Lessing94

British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer … 1919–2013

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Through the Zombie Glass

“You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

“What do you mean, 'you don't need to buy it'? You don't need to do anything, except pay taxes and die.”

Sam Donaldson (1934) American journalist

As quoted in "Respek" http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=m1_FAsefZ6o (18 July 2004), Da Ali G Show. <br class="br">2000s

“Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“America is a country with a First Amendment, and you're allowed to publish just about anything you want, as long as it's not real secret information. Of course, nobody really does that except for, you know, you guys in the media.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, Larry King Live (2000)

“A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable.”

G. K. Chesterton book What I Saw in America

"Fads and Public Opinion" http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/10/ <br class="br">What I Saw in America (1922) <br class="br">Context: A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable. I was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim that the sense of my own laughable position never left me. But when the native and the foreigner have finished with seeing the fun of each other in things that are meant to be serious, they both approach the far more delicate and dangerous ground of things that are meant to be funny. The sense of humour is generally very national; perhaps that is why the internationalists are so careful to purge themselves of it. I had occasion during the war to consider the rights and wrongs of certain differences alleged to have arisen between the English and American soldiers at the front. And, rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that they arose from the failure to understand when a foreigner is serious and when he is humorous. And it is in the very nature of the best sort of joke to be the worst sort of insult if it is not taken as a joke.

“I know that you have nothing. That is why I ask you for everything. So that you will have everything.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Sé que tienes nada. Por ello te pido todo. Para que tengas todo.
Voces (1943)