Doris Lessing Quotes

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Doris Lessing

Profession : Writer

Birth : October 22, 1919

I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'

Doris Lessing

We like to think we can solve everything, but we can't always.

Doris Lessing

I do have a sense, and I've never not had it, of how easily things can vanish.

Doris Lessing

The thing is, I haven't changed at all.

Doris Lessing

I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life.

Doris Lessing

I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done.

Doris Lessing

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

Doris Lessing

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.

Doris Lessing

If you are a young writer today, it's very hard.

Doris Lessing

I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.

Doris Lessing

When there's a war, people get married.

Doris Lessing

You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.

Doris Lessing

It's very interesting what you don't care about.

Doris Lessing

I am your original autodidact.

Doris Lessing

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

Doris Lessing

When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.

Doris Lessing

I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.

Doris Lessing

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

Doris Lessing

I thought that would go without saying, that if a mother gives up her children, it's very painful.

Doris Lessing

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.

Doris Lessing