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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. "
Doris Lessing
Big
Television
Look
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" Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says. "
Doris Lessing
Adventurous
Men
Women
" I'm compulsive. "
Doris Lessing
Compulsive
" 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. "
Doris Lessing
Hard Work
You
Work
" Pearls mean tears. "
Doris Lessing
Pearls
Mean
Tears
" That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. "
Doris Lessing
You
Learning
Life
" My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies. "
Doris Lessing
Her
Seventies
Mother
" 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
" Literature is analysis after the event. "
Doris Lessing
Analysis
After
Event
" You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant. "
Doris Lessing
You
Servant
Red
" Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them. "
Doris Lessing
Never
People
Royalty
" 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 your original autodidact. "
Doris Lessing
I Am
Original
Am
" I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women. "
Doris Lessing
Much
Done
Movement
" I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame. "
Doris Lessing
Writers
Worrying
Those
" We like to think we can solve everything, but we can't always. "
Doris Lessing
Think
Everything
Solve
" 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. "
Doris Lessing
Think
Parents
Travel
" September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible. "
Doris Lessing
Over
Back
History
" I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars. "
Doris Lessing
Worrying
Dead
Off
" 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
" I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement. "
Doris Lessing
Women
Gone
I Think
" We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed. "
Doris Lessing
Our
Use
Parents
" It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months. "
Doris Lessing
Eighteen
Me
Months
" 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
" Some people obtain fame, others deserve it. "
Doris Lessing
Some
Deserve
Fame
" I was a nursemaid. And it was pretty boring. "
Doris Lessing
Pretty
Boring
" There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful. "
Doris Lessing
Growing Up
Growing
Boy
" My father was in the First World War. "
Doris Lessing
World
Father
First World
" Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance! "
Doris Lessing
Bad
Chance
God
" What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. "
Doris Lessing
Me
Bear
Want
" 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