If we were to put into practice what we know ... but that is the point. Doris Lessing More Quotes by Doris Lessing More Quotes From Doris Lessing But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of very emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it's a half- love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves. Doris Lessing dyingpowerpeople There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag... Doris Lessing bores-youreadingbook The whole process of writing is a setting at a distance. That is the value of it - to the writer, and to the people who read the results of this process, which takes the raw, the individual, the uncriticized, the unexamined, into the realm of the general. Doris Lessing distancewritingpeople Men are unwise and curiously planned. Doris Lessing unwisemen Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you've written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then I won't have to write it. Doris Lessing writingbookfirsts I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young. Doris Lessing shiftingyouthdesire Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroyeth much good. Doris Lessing weaponsbiblewar When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists. Doris Lessing examplepeoplefiction No one's noticed. So much is destroyed, we can't be bothered. Doris Lessing bothereddestroyed People don't mind immoral messages. They don't mind art which says that murder is good, cruelty is good, sex for sex's sake is good. They like it, provided the message is wrapped up a little. And they like messages saying that murder is bad, cruelty is bad, and love is love is love is love. What they can't stand is to be told it all doesn't matter, they can't stand formlessness. Doris Lessing love-issexart I think people are always looking for gurus. It's the easiest thing in the world to become a guru. It's quite terrifying. I once saw something fascinating here in New York. It must have been in the early seventies--guru time. A man used to go and sit in Central Park, wearing elaborate golden robes. He never once opened his mouth, he just sat. He'd appear at lunchtime. People appeared from everywhere, because he was obviously a holy man, and this went on for months. They just sat around him in reverent silence. Eventually he got fed up with it and left. Yes. It's as easy as that. Doris Lessing new-yorkmenthinking As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. Doris Lessing takenmenson Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of society, a type of person, not yet admitted to the general literate consciousness. Doris Lessing typeconsciousnesssuccessful We are several people fitted inside each other. Chinese boxes. Our bodies are the outside box. Or the inside one if you like. Doris Lessing chinesebodypeople One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel -- the quality of philosophy. Doris Lessing qualityshould-havephilosophy The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to be paid. Doris Lessing costpainwatches Perhaps it is a fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same -- to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel. Doris Lessing mutual-helpdifferentmind At no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later, if ever. Doris Lessing populationeventscountry [The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came as a great surprise. Instantly a lot of very ancient weapons were unleashed, the main ones, as usual, being on the theme of "She is unfeminine", "She is a man-hater". Doris Lessing notebookmenthinking Women's emotions are still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don't live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly. Doris Lessing womenrealsilly
