Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I'm just a story teller. "
Doris Lessing
Teller
Story
Just
Related Quotes:
" I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town. "
Doris Lessing
Grandson
Two
Great
" As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital. "
Doris Lessing
Got
Prize
Nobel Prize
" Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so. "
Doris Lessing
Unexpected
Human
Blossom
" Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way. "
Doris Lessing
Quiet
Sometimes
Think
" The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war. "
Doris Lessing
Parents
War
Child
" I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing. "
Doris Lessing
Very
Unhappy
Writing
" I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had - I don't know what - the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way, perhaps. That's what I think writers are for. "
Doris Lessing
Know
Start
Think
" I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life. "
Doris Lessing
Never
Always
Am
" All my friends' mothers were appalling women. "
Doris Lessing
Friends
Women
All My Friends
" Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors. "
Doris Lessing
First
Distance
Seem
" It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel. "
Doris Lessing
Lovely
Give
Money
" I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase. "
Doris Lessing
Sitting
About
Well
" 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
" I would not be at all surprised to find out... that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess. "
Doris Lessing
Ways
Affect
Buildings
" When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color bar in their lives. "
Doris Lessing
Bar
Color
Communist
" For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. "
Doris Lessing
Work
Only
Life
" It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important. "
Doris Lessing
Matters
Treat
Important
" 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
Start
" What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible. "
Doris Lessing
World
Revolution
People
" This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything. "
Doris Lessing
Work
Going
People
" I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world. "
Doris Lessing
Sure
Going
World
" My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother. "
Doris Lessing
Brother
Great
Energy
" I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world,' but we had children by the dozen and got married. "
Doris Lessing
Children
World
War
" 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. "
Doris Lessing
Wisdom
Beginning
End
" I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city. "
Doris Lessing
Possible
City
Heroes
" I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning. "
Doris Lessing
Blair
Beginning
Always
" What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared. "
Doris Lessing
Respect
Past
Learning
" I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done. "
Doris Lessing
You
Done
My Life
" The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms. "
Doris Lessing
Expect
You
Talk
" In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better. "
Doris Lessing
Process
Writing
Story