Doris Lessing

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge. ”

I was writing all my childhood. And I wrote two novels when I was 17, which were terrible. And I'm not sorry I threw them out. So, I wrote. I had to write. You know, the thing was, I had no education. ”

I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world,' but we had children by the dozen and got married. ”

I thought that would go without saying, that if a mother gives up her children, it's very painful. ”

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion. ”

The human race has been telling stories since it began. ”

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so. ”

Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time. ”

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors. ”

Everything all the time in a city is extraordinary! ”