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" I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not that you say, 'I want to write a science fiction book.' You start from the other end, and what you have to say dictates the form of it. "

Doris Lessing

Book

You

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" Some people obtain fame, others deserve it. "

" It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. "

" What is a hero without love for mankind. "

" Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way. "

" What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. "

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" Literature is analysis after the event. "

" My father was always so mingled with rage at his life. "

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

" I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government. "

" There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. "

" When I was bringing up a child, I taught myself to write in very short, concentrated bursts. If I had a weekend, or a week, I'd do unbelievable amounts of work. "

Doris Lessing

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" Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors. "

" The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion. "

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

" A story is how we construct our experiences. "

" I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement. "

" I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town. "

" Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance! "

" I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents. "

" I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. "

" The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for themselves and get the world's publishing industry to jump to their tune. "

" My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies. "

" 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. "

" I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase. "

" 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. "

" It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "