574 Quotes by Doris Lessing

Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one’s self behind a mask.

Writers, and particularly female writers, have to fight for the conditions they need to work...

I do think that only a very rigid and conforming society could have produced the ideas of an eccentric in the first place.

A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it’s for a half-second, ‘Perhaps this is THE man.

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag.

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

It was from Willi I learned how many women like to be bullied. It was humiliating and I used to fight against accepting it as true. But I’ve seen it over and over again. If.

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.

Yes, my child, you must read. You must read everything that comes your way. It doesn’t matter what you read at first, later you’ll learn discrimination. Schools are no good, Matty, you learn nothing at school. If you want to be anything, you must educate yourself.