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There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag...
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
Parts
Libraries
Books
Bore
Reading
Picking
Read
Attract
Book
Dropping
Way
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Library
Bookshops
More quotes by Doris Lessing
Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure.
Doris Lessing
The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.
Doris Lessing
A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.
Doris Lessing
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
What is a hero without love for mankind.
Doris Lessing
Borrowing is not much better than begging just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
Doris Lessing
I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.
Doris Lessing
But children can't be a center of life and a reason for being. They can be a thousand things that are delightful, interesting, satisfying, but they can't be a well-spring to live from. Or they shouldn't be.
Doris Lessing
A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second, 'Perhaps this is THE man.
Doris Lessing
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
I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.
Doris Lessing
The cleverest trick of the Devil is that nobody believes in him. It. Her. Well, we have been very stupid.
Doris Lessing
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook? Sometimes it ought to be. Sometimes it is.
Doris Lessing
Everyone knows that where there is something that is capable of giving profit, then exploited it will be.
Doris Lessing
Artists are the traditional interpreters of dreams and nightmares.
Doris Lessing
I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.
Doris Lessing
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.
Doris Lessing
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.
Doris Lessing
Is there any delight as great as the child's discovering ability?
Doris Lessing
Curse not the king, no not in thy thought and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber, for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.
Doris Lessing
