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" 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

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" I do have a sense, and I've never not had it, of how easily things can vanish. "

" I never stopped reading. "

" I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life. "

Doris Lessing

Never

Always

" I have ideas that I will probably never write now. "

" You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books. "

" I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading. "

Doris Lessing

School

Myself

" You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much. "

Doris Lessing

You

Say

" My father was in the First World War. "

" I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing. "

" God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't. "

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

" All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed. "

" 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. "

" I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done. "

" I am your original autodidact. "

Doris Lessing

I Am

Original

" It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important. "

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

" 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. "

" September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible. "

" 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. "

" We like to think we can solve everything, but we can't always. "

" The thing is, I haven't changed at all. "

Doris Lessing

Changed

Thing

" There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't. "

" Things are not quite so simple always as black and white. "

" Literature is analysis after the event. "

" I thought that would go without saying, that if a mother gives up her children, it's very painful. "

" 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. "

" With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how. "

" There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to. "

" What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better. "