574 Quotes by Doris Lessing

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life but in a new way.

Parents should leave books lying around marked 'forbidden' if they want their children to read.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all.

Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel.

The kitten was six weeks old. It was enchanting, a delicate fairy-tale cat, whose Siamese genes showed in the shape of the face, ears, tail, and the subtle lines of its body. She sat, a tiny thing, in the middle of a yellow carpet, surrounded by five worshippers, not at all afraid of us. Then she stalked around that floor of the house, inspecting every inch of it, climbed up on to my bed, crept under the fold of a sheet, and was at home.

Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, amongst other creatures, in a large landscape.

If a fish is a movement embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.