Quotes from Doris Lessing

I remembered the words particularly: Somebody pulled a thread of the fabric and it all dissolved.

Why should I be expected to shut up about everything I believe in?

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Now he drops his self-parody and says with great seriousness: "My dear Ella, don't you know what the great revolution of our time is? The Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution—they're nothing at all. The real revolution is, women against men.

I think it is possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time, outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and sub-dividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects and creeds. But it was an attempt.

Our old friend maturity again! Well, I'm not going to be bullied by that one.

What was the sense of loving, hating, wanting, resenting, needing, rejecting—and sometimes all in the space of an hour—when she was here, by herself, free.

scarcely born, and then adult, and then old, and then dead.

Sempre achei curioso o facto das mulheres serem veneradas como deusas, enquanto na vida quotidiana são remetidas para um papel secundário e consideradas inferiores.

What I feel now doesn't matter at all? But at what point I am entitled to say to myself, what I am feeling now is valid? After all, one can't go through one's whole life in phases. There must be a goal somewhere

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us.

But then, what is madness, but a refuge, a retreating from the world?

This may be animal behaviour, I don't know, but it is certainly human behaviour, when humans allow themselves to revert to barbarism, and has been for thousands, probably even millions of years -- depending on where one decides to put the beginning of our history as humans, not animals.

In times of war, as everyone knows who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we re capable --- in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she was in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeing to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments. or peaks, then nothing had happened to her for a long time; snd she could look forward to nothing much but a dwindling away from full household activity into getting old

It is not too much to say that when the word blood is pronounced, this is a sign that reason is about to depart.

Why am I so ungrateful when I suffer so little compared to other women?

When a leader invokes blood to arouse us to support him and his cause, it is time for us to be on our guard, to think of those long millennia when our ancestor's lives were safeguard by blood and sacrifice.

To reflect that it is nearly always those leaders who claim to be in the forefront of progress, enlightenment, etc. who are the most ready to invoke blood, does offer the pleasures of irony.

Somewhere about middle age, it occurs to most people that a century is only their lifetime twice. On that thought, all of history rushes together, and now they live inside the story of time, instead of looking at it from outside as observers. Only ten or twelve of their lifetimes ago, Shakespeare was alive. The French Revolution was just the other day.

I was marvelling, again, how easy it is, living deprived, to forget love, joy, delight.

I wish I hadn't become so conscious of everything. Once I wouldn't have noticed: now every conversation, every encounter with a person seems like crossing a mined field; and why can't I accept that one's closest friends at moments stick a knife in, deep, between the ribs?

Por qué siento esta necesidad tan horrible de forzar a los otros a que vean las cosas como yo? Es infantil; ¿por qué habrían de hacerlo? En el fondo, me da miedo encontrarme a solas con mis sentimientos.

I would not be at all surprised to find out... that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.