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.’ – Doris Lessing
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. – Doris Lessing
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. – Doris Lessing
The World War I, I’m a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it’s like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war. – Doris Lessing
Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew. – Doris Lessing
It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important. – Doris Lessing
September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn’t that terrible. – Doris Lessing
What the feminists want of me is something they haven’t examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. – Doris Lessing
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. – Doris Lessing
Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse. – Doris Lessing
I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I’m delighted to win them all, the whole lot. – Doris Lessing
I remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop or look at a list and see anything that I want, or almost anything, is like a kind of miracle. – Doris Lessing
What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, ‘Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,’ reducing it to a simple formula. – Doris Lessing
Humanity’s legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: ‘He/she was born, lived, died.’ Probably that is the template of our stories – a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds. – Doris Lessing
It is terrible to destroy a person’s picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. – Doris Lessing
Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative – despite what current ideology says. – Doris Lessing