if you understand something, you don't forgive it, you are the thing itself: forgiveness is for what you don't understand. Doris Lessing More Quotes by Doris Lessing More Quotes From Doris Lessing If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again. Doris Lessing different years thinking Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad. Doris Lessing young-writers independence advice 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-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. Doris Lessing reading doors book With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how. Doris Lessing thought-provoking reading book There is a whole generation of women and it was as if their lives came to a stop when they had children. Most of them got pretty neurotic - because, I think, of the contrast between what they were taught at school they were capable of being and what actually happened to them. Doris Lessing children school thinking Laughter is by definition healthy. Doris Lessing laughter healing life A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants. Doris Lessing library tyrants world What matters most is that we learn from living. Doris Lessing what-matters witty life I spend a good deal of time wondering how we will seem to the people who come after us. This is not an idle interest, but a deliberate attempt to strengthen the power of that "other eye," which we can use to judge ourselves. Doris Lessing eye judging people I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I. Doris Lessing mother writing war At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares. Doris Lessing growing-up pain writing Dreams have always been my friend, full of information, full of warnings. Doris Lessing information warning dream If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air. Doris Lessing cat air water I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world. Doris Lessing kind feels world There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be. Doris Lessing crafts law writing Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing. Doris Lessing begging-you lending stealing The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt and even in the long run to start thinking. Doris Lessing running long thinking One certainty we all accept is the condition of being uncertain and insecure. Doris Lessing insecure uncertain accepting There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. Doris Lessing sin real inspirational A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. Doris Lessing writing book thinking
