Doris Lessing quotes - page 6

Doris Lessing was a British-Zimbabwean novelist, poet, and short story writer renowned for her insightful explorations of society and psychology. Her works, including "The Golden Notebook," challenged conventional norms and examined the complexities of human relationships and politics. She became one of the most influential literary voices of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Here are 157 of her quotes:

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

There was a kind of shifting of the balances of my brain, of the way I had been thinking, the same kind of realignment as when, a few days before, words like democracy, liberty, freedom, had faded under pressure of a new sort of understanding of the real movement of the world towards dark, hardening power. I knew, but of course the word, written, cannot convey the quality of this knowing, that whatever already is has its logic and its force. I felt this, like a vision, in a new kind of knowing. And I knew that the cruelty and the spite and the I. I. I. I. of Saul and of Anna were part of the logic of war; and I knew how strong these emotions were, in a way that would never leave me, would become part of how I saw the world.

Doris Lessing

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

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

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

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

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.

Doris Lessing

I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'

Doris Lessing

They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off.

Doris Lessing

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.

Doris Lessing

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

Doris Lessing

When there's a war, people get married.

Doris Lessing

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

Doris Lessing

It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you.

Doris Lessing

I would not be at all surprised to find out... that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.

Doris Lessing

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.

Doris Lessing

I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents.

Doris Lessing

The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war.

Doris Lessing

I wasn't an active feminist in the '60s, never have been.

Doris Lessing

There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.

Doris Lessing

September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.

Doris Lessing

All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.

Doris Lessing