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She was thirty-nine. No, she did not envy her eighteen-year- old self at all. But she did envy, envied every day more bitterly, that young girl's genuine independence, largeness, scope, and courage.

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
Courage
Eighteen
Year
Scope
Girl
Aging
Young
Thirty
Self
Envy
Every
Independence
Largeness
Years
Genuine
Bitterly
Nine
Envied

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I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'
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Literature is analysis after the event.
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We do not know which of our silver products will be judged as gold by our successors, nor does it matter.
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At no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later, if ever.
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What is charm then? The free giving of a grace, the spending of something given by nature in her role of spendthrift ... something extra, superfluous, unnecessary, essentially a power thrown away.
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All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to being noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous.
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I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.
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I stood looking down out of the window. The street seemed miles down. Suddenly I felt as if I'd flung myself out of the window. I could see myself lying on the pavement. Then I seemed to be standing by the body on the pavement. I was two people. Blood and brains were scattered everywhere. I knelt down and began licking up the blood and brains
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Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.
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You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.
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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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A story is how we construct our experiences.
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Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.
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When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
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For there is never any way to go but in.
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Perhaps it is a fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same -- to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel.
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...or like an old friend one has known too well and doesn't want to see.
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Is there any delight as great as the child's discovering ability?
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You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.
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