Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing, born Tayler, was a British novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, autobiographer, and science fiction writer who worked in English.
Born on 22 October 1919 in Kermanshah, Lessing saw her family relocate to Southern Rhodesia in 1925. She was educated at Dominican Convent High School. In 1949 she moved to London, where she lived until her death on 17 November 2013.
Her noted works include the novels The Grass Is Singing, The Golden Notebook, A Ripple from the Storm, The Memoirs of a Survivor, The Good Terrorist, and The Cleft. She received the David Cohen Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature, and she held the postnominal distinction of Companion of Honour.
Lessing is formally associated with the literary movement of literary realism, and her practice extended across novels, poetry, plays, autobiography, essays, and science fiction. The range of forms she worked in — from realist fiction to speculative writing — is reflected in the variety of titles for which she is noted. The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist stand among the works that mark the sustained reach of her output.
Quotes by Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing's insights on:
If a fish is a movement embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, amongst other creatures, in a large landscape.
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.
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.
Parents should leave books lying around marked 'forbidden' if they want their children to read.
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life but in a new way.
That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life, but in a new way.
