574 Quotes by Doris Lessing

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don’t.

How boring these emotions are that we’re caught in and can’t get free of, no matter how much we want to...

Women have this deep instinctive need to build a man up as a man. I suppose this is because real men become fewer and fewer, and we are frightened, trying to create a man.

Is there any delight as great as the child’s discovering ability?

Your fascinating admirer waits here for you,’ said Donovan, indicating a vacant and grass-grown lot at the corner. ‘Yes, Matty dear, when you’ve gone to your virgin bed, he sits here, in his car, watching your room to make sure of your exclusive interest in him – the whole town’s laughing its head off about it,’ he added cruelly, and glanced swiftly sideways to see how she would take it.

A writer is the conscience of the world.

What society doesn’t realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don’t now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.

We are all of us, to some degree or another, brainwashed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with foreign eyes... the best we can hope for is that a kindly friend from another culture will enable us to look at our culture with dispassionate eyes.

I have you for being normal, I hate you for it. You’re a normal human being. What right have you to that?