574 Quotes by Doris Lessing

Laughter is by definition healthy.

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.

You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.

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

I woke up one morning, and I couldn't move my arm. It was the oddest thing, the paralysis. I called up a friend and said, "I think I've had a stroke," and, in fact, that's what my doctor told me. It wasn't terrible, but it was enough to scare me. Now I think about death all the time. I have my death arm, my right arm.

Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.

If we were to put into practice what we know ... but that is the point.

I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.

Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad.