DORIS LESSING QUOTES VII

British author (1919-2013)

Writing can't be a way of life -- the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

DORIS LESSING

Doris Lessing: Conversations

Tags: life


Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

Tags: art


I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had--I don't know what--the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way perhaps. That's what I think writers are for. This is what our function is.

DORIS LESSING

The Paris Review, spring 1988


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.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

Tags: future


I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.

DORIS LESSING

Time Bites

Tags: reading