“Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.”
Women
“There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.”
BestAll Quotes by Doris Lessing
“I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'”
Success“Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.”
Trust“There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.”
Learning“In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.”
Learning“My father was in the First World War.”
War“For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.”
Alone“I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.”
Marriage“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“Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.”
Funny“There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.”
Best“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”
Science“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“You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.”
Women“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.”
Travel“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“Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.”
Society“I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.”
War“It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”
Truth“When there's a war, people get married.”
War