Quotes By Author: Doris Lessing

“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.”

“At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about ‘petty personal problems’ was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one’s own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can’t be yours alone. […] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one’s unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.”

“This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them.”

“Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.”

“Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.”