Quotes from Doris Lessing

I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed.

None of you [men] ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it.

Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.

Men are unwise and curiously planned.

A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second, 'Perhaps this is THE man.

One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel -- the quality of philosophy.

And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.

Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous.

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.

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.

What matters most is that we learn from living.

Laughter is by definition healthy.

She was thirty-nine. No, she did not envy her eighteen-year- old self at all. But she did envy, envied every day more bitterly, that young girl's genuine independence, largeness, scope, and courage.

Every child has the capacity to be everything.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

I'm compulsive.

I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase.

A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

Intelligence forbids tears.

When I was bringing up a child, I taught myself to write in very short, concentrated bursts. If I had a weekend, or a week, I'd do unbelievable amounts of work.

For she was of that generation who, having found nothing in religion, had formed themselves through literature.

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.