“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
“It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel.”
MoneyAll Quotes by Doris Lessing
“I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.”
Women“I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.”
Truth“Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.”
Society“Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.”
Funny“When there's a war, people get married.”
War“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”
Science“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“I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.”
Government“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“There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.”
Learning“Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.”
Women“I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.”
War“I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.”
Marriage“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“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“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.”
Age“I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.”
Women