Doris Lessing

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

— Doris Lessing

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

— Doris Lessing

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

— Doris Lessing

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

— Doris Lessing

Better Counsel comes overnight.

— Doris Lessing

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

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

— Doris Lessing

Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.

— Doris Lessing

What is a hero without love for mankind.

— Doris Lessing

Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

— Doris Lessing

Laughter is by definition healthy.

— Doris Lessing

That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life, but in a new way.

— Doris Lessing

Literature is analysis after the event.

— Doris Lessing

What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate, that you don't need love when you do or that you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

— Doris Lessing

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.

— Doris Lessing

A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

— Doris Lessing

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

— Doris Lessing

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

— Doris Lessing

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

— Doris Lessing

The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.

— Doris Lessing

Pearls mean tears.

— Doris Lessing

Er zijn geen wetmatigheden voor de roman. Er zijn er nooit geweest en er zullen er nooit zijn

— Doris Lessing

Literatuur is de analyse na een gebeurtenis

— Doris Lessing

Ik weet niet veel over cursussen creatief schrijven. Maar ze vertellen de waarheid niet als er niet geleerd wordt dat schrijven hard werk is en dat je een groot deel van je (persoonlijk) leven moet opgeven om een schrijver te zijn

— Doris Lessing

Met een bibliotheek ben je vrij en niet beperkt door tijdelijke politieke klimaten. Het is de meest democratische van alle instituten want niemand, absoluut niemand, kan u zeggen wat u moet lezen en wanneer en hoe.

— Doris Lessing

You are young, and then you are middle-aged, but it is hard to tell the moment of passage from one state to the next.

— Doris Lessing

And what authority even the creases in a suit can convey.

— Doris Lessing

For years—decades—perhaps centuries—women have been complaining about men’s lack of sensitivity, their unkindness, but no sooner have women acquired power than they permit, even sanctify, some of the nastiest manifestations of human nature.

— Doris Lessing

Oh cat; I’d say, or pray: be-ooootiful cat! Delicious cat! Exquisite cat! Satiny cat! Cat like a soft owl, cat with paws like moths, jeweled cat, miraculous cat! Cat, cat, cat, cat.

— Doris Lessing