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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

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Doris Lessing
Age: 94 †
Born: 1919
Born: October 22
Died: 2013
Died: November 17
Autobiographer
Essayist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Bakhtaran
Doris May Tayler
Jane Somers
People
Books
Disappeared
Literature
Respected
Society
Ordinary
Doesn
Realize
Past
Respect
Book
Serious
Whole
Learning
Much
Realizing

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Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.
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I am interested only in stretching myself, on living as fully as I can.
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The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes.
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All politicians are not the same. I've never felt that way. What is the same is that voters get very excited about new faces, like Clinton and Blair - and they have unrealistic expectations that the world will change overnight. A cynical old hand like myself knows that it won't.
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Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.
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What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it.
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Parents should leave books lying around marked forbidden if they want their children to read.
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I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.
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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.
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If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.
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All my friends' mothers were appalling women.
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Borrowing is not much better than begging just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
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I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city.
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there are two kinds of humanity, those who dream and those who don't, and both tend to despise, or to tolerate, the other.
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What women will say to other women grumbling in their kitchens and complaining and gossiping or what they make clear in their masochism is often the last thing they will say aloud - a man may overhear. Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long.
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You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.
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I hate to sound clichéd, but I do see life as a journey. How else can you see it?
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What matters most is that we learn from living.
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In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
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Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one's self behind a mask.
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