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
dictates fiction form problem science
I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not that you say, 'I want to write a science fiction book.' You start from the other end, and what you have to say dictates the form of it.
time space fiction
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
people example fiction
When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.
fiction realizing social
What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.
fiction records factual
I have to conclude that fiction is better at 'the truth' than a factual record,
education novels sorry threw wrote
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.
children dozen married second war wicked
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.
bringing taught work
When I was bringing up a child, I taught myself to write in very short, concentrated bursts. If I had a weekend, or a week, I'd do unbelievable amounts of work.
dimensions surprised ways
I would not be at all surprised to find out... that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.
women
I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.
life
I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life.
good written
You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.
cannot five mould whether women
You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.
gives
I thought that would go without saying, that if a mother gives up her children, it's very painful.