“When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.”
Peace
“We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.”
DreamsAll Quotes by Doris Lessing
“When there's a war, people get married.”
War“Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.”
Society“What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula.”
Imagination“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”
Science“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.”
Learning“My father was in the First World War.”
War“I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'”
Success“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”
Learning“There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.”
Best“For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.”
Alone“What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.”
Religion“All my friends' mothers were appalling women.”
Women“Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.”
Women“Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.”
Funny“I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.”
Government“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.”
Society“It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”
Truth“We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.”
Dreams“I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.”
Women