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" I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge. "

Doris Lessing

True

Down

Own

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Never

Always

" I haven't got the energy to write now. "

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Eighteen

Months

" Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing. "

" I remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop or look at a list and see anything that I want, or almost anything, is like a kind of miracle. "

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Remember

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" For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. "

" It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you. "

" 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. "

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

" Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds. "

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" I was writing all my childhood. And I wrote two novels when I was 17, which were terrible. And I'm not sorry I threw them out. So, I wrote. I had to write. You know, the thing was, I had no education. "

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" When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers. "

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