Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CHwas a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 October 1919
song joy substance
This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to hidden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.
culture phrases dialect
Always, in epochs when the languages and dialects of a culture have become outstripped by development of a practical sort, these languages become repetitive, formalised -- and ridiculous. Phrases, words, associations of sentences spin themselves out automatically, but have no effect: they have lost their power, their energy.
insecure accepting uncertain
One certainty we all accept is the condition of being uncertain and insecure.
desire shifting youth
I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.
women slave women-beauty
Women are slaves to their beauty.
war past people
In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.
war years long
So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains.
stars mean may
We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate.
stars mean may
We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate.
passion spendthrift courtiers
Every spendthrift passion has its attendant courtiers.
cat mean kitten
Cats mean kittens, plentiful and frequent.
growing-up unique understanding
Growing up is, after all, only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what every one shares.
solitude treasure contact
I treasure solitude. One doesn't have to have human contact.
people magic wavelength
I am so happy to be communicating with people on this newest of new wavelengths which to some older people must seem like a kind of magic.