“When there's a war, people get married.”
War
“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.”
SocietyAll Quotes by Doris Lessing
“I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.”
Government“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“I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'”
Success“September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.”
History“It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel.”
Money“There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.”
Learning“Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.”
Trust“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“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“My father was in the First World War.”
War“We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.”
Dreams“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“Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.”
Women“What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.”
Religion“For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.”
Alone“Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.”
Society“I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.”
Marriage“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”
Science