574 Quotes by Doris Lessing

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

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.

All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not.

I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.

We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.

Music attacks my inner ear like an antagonist, it's not my world.

The world is only tolerable because of the empty places in it...when the world's filled up, we'll have to get hold of a star. Any star. Venus, or Mars. Get hold of it and leave it empty. Man needs an empty space somewhere for his spirit to rest in.

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.

...We try to have things both ways. We’ve always refused to live by the book and the rule; but then why start worrying because the world doesn’t treat us by rule?