Doris Lessing Quotes

"I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become."

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

"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."

"Small things amuse small minds."

"Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time."

"There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be."

"A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer."

"Pearls mean tears."

"If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air."

"Literature is analysis after the event."

"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so."

"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."

"Some people obtain fame, others deserve it."

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

"What is a hero without love for mankind."

"Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them."

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

"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."

"We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed."

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