British author (1919-2013)
Men are unwise and curiously planned.
DORIS LESSING
The Cleft: A Novel
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Writers on Writing
[The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came as a great surprise. Instantly a lot of very ancient weapons were unleashed, the main ones, as usual, being on the theme of "She is unfeminine", "She is a man-hater".
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
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
The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire
When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.
DORIS LESSING
interview, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2006
What he, the writer, is asking is impossible. Why should he expect this extraordinary being, the perfect critic (who does occasionally exist), why should there be anyone else who comprehends what he is trying to do? After all, there is only one person spinning that particular cocoon, only one person whose business it is to spin it.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
You know, it never occurred to me until afterwards that everybody in these books is a refugee. But everyone is running from drought or flood or civil war. I do think a lot about them. You know, not far from here is a road where refugees of all kinds line the roads, and people go there to pick up a plumber or carpenter or something. This isn't an official thing, you know, but there they are. A friend of mine goes there when she wants anything. They are all very skilled people.
DORIS LESSING
interview, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2006
I was in New York when Clinton was elected the first time, and everyone I knew was in a state of mad euphoria. I wondered what had happened to my hard-headed friends? Almost everyone I knew was drunk on this great white hope. The next time I was in New York, no one had a good word to say about Clinton, but everyone was in love with Hillary. She was the last word. It's all so unreal. Of course, it's no different in England. Here everyone was besotted with Tony Blair. He was a new face. Do people never learn?
DORIS LESSING
interview, The Progressive, June 1999
You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious;
but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself.
DORIS LESSING
Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher
Laughter is by definition healthy.
DORIS LESSING
The Summer Before Dark
No one's noticed. So much is destroyed, we can't be bothered.
DORIS LESSING
The Paris Review, spring 1988
It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
DORIS LESSING
The Grass Is Singing
I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.
DORIS LESSING
Time Bites
Basic facts tend always to be those most easily overlooked.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s, what I saw was, first of all, Hitler, he was going to live forever. Mussolini was in for 10,000 years. You had the Soviet Union, which was, by definition, going to last forever. There was the British empire -- nobody imagined it could come to an end. So why should one believe in any kind of permanence?
DORIS LESSING
"Doris Lessing Reflects on World, Change", The Washington Post, October 7, 2006
People don't mind immoral messages. They don't mind art which says that murder is good, cruelty is good, sex for sex's sake is good. They like it, provided the message is wrapped up a little. And they like messages saying that murder is bad, cruelty is bad, and love is love is love is love. What they can't stand is to be told it all doesn't matter, they can't stand formlessness.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that--a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice--or if we notice, belittle--equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization.
DORIS LESSING
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside