Doris Lessing

As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital. ”

September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible. ”

When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color bar in their lives. ”

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. ”

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. ”

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing. ”

I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents. ”

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. ”

It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you. ”

It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel. ”