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I'm Always Astounded At The Way We Automatically Look At What Divides And Separates Us. We Never Look At What People Have In Common. If You See It, Black And White People, Both Sides Look To See The Differences, They Don't Look At What They Have Together. Men And Women, And Old And Young, And So On. And This Is A Disease Of The Mind, The Way I See It. Because In Actual Fact, Men And Women Have Much More In Common Than They Are Separated.

-Doris Lessing

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I'm Always Astounded At

Doris Lessing

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I'm Always Astounded At The Way We Automatically Look At What Divides And Separates Us. We Never Look At What People Have In Common. If You See It, Black And White People, Both Sides Look To See The Differences, They Don't Look At What They Have Together. Men And Women, And Old And Young, And So On. And This Is A Disease Of The Mind, The Way I See It. Because In Actual Fact, Men And Women Have Much More In Common Than They Are Separated.

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Golden Notebook

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We, As A Society, Can't Tolerate Very Much Difference.

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An Interim Report - That Is What An Autobiography Is.

I Woke Up One Morning, And I Couldn't Move My Arm. It Was The Oddest Thing, The Paralysis. I Called Up A Friend And Said, "i Think I've Had A Stroke," And, In Fact, That's What My Doctor Told Me. It Wasn't Terrible, But It Was Enough To Scare Me. Now I Think About Death All The Time. I Have My Death Arm, My Right Arm.

Hitler Admired Stalin, Quite Properly Seeing Himself As A Mere Infant In Crime Compared To His Great Exemplar.

I Don't Think In Terms Of Optimism And Pessimism When Writing A Story. I Am Telling A Story.

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My Father Was In The First World War.

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The Automatic Reaction Of Practically Any Young Person Is, At Once, Against Authority. That, I Think, Began In The First World War Because Of The Trenches, And The Incompetence Of The People On All Fronts.

Man Who Is He? Too Bad, To Be The Work Of God: Too Good For The Work Of Chance!

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The Critics Slap Labels On You And Then Expect You To Talk Inside Their Terms.

The Worst Superstition Is To Consider Our Own Tolerable.

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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.

In The Writing Process, The More A Story Cooks, The Better.

Anna Was Saying To Herself: Why Do I Always Have This Awful Need To Make Other People See Things As I Do? It's Childish, Why Should They? What It Amounts To Is That I'm Scared Of Being Alone In What I Feel.

All Sanity Depends On This: That It Should Be A Delight To Feel Heat Strike The Skin, A Delight To Stand Upright, Knowing The Bones Moving Easily Under The Flesh.

There Is Only One Real Sin And That Is To Persuade Oneself That The Second Best Is Anything But Second Best.

I Am Increasingly Afflicted By Vertigo Where Words Mean Nothing

Words Mean Nothing

A Woman Writer, Quitting Love Before Literature When Love Lets Her Down, Will Put Literature Before Love.

Oh Cat, I'd Say, Or Pray: Be-ootiful Cat! Delicious Cat! Exquisite Cat! Satiny Cat! Cat Like A Soft Owl, Cat With Paws Like Moths, Jewelled Cat, Miraculous Cat! Cat, Cat, Cat, Cat.

I Wanted To Highlight That Whole Dreadful Process In Book Publishing That 'nothing Succeeds Like Success.'

I'm Going To Make The Obvious Point That Maybe The Word Neurotic Means The Condition Of Being Highly Conscious And Developed. The Essence Of Neurosis Is Conflict. But The Essence Of Living Now, Fully, Not Blocking Off To What Goes On, Is Conflict. In Fact I've Reached The Stage Where I Look At People And Say - He Or She, They Are Whole At All Because They've Chosen To Block Off At This Stage Or That. People Stay Sane By Blocking Off, By Limiting Themselves.

I Stood Looking Down Out Of The Window. The Street Seemed Miles Down. Suddenly I Felt As If I'd Flung Myself Out Of The Window. I Could See Myself Lying On The Pavement. Then I Seemed To Be Standing By The Body On The Pavement. I Was Two People. Blood And Brains Were Scattered Everywhere. I Knelt Down And Began Licking Up The Blood And Brains

I Do Not Think That Marriage Is One Of My Talents. I've Been Much Happier Unmarried Than Married.

I Write Because I've Always Written, Can't Stop. I Am A Writing Animal. The Way A Silk Worm Is A Silk-producing Animal.

It Has Become A Kind Of Religion That You Can't Criticise Because Then You Become A Traitor To The Great Cause, Which I Am Not. It Is Time We Began To Ask Who Are These Women Who Continually Rubbish Men. The Most Stupid, Ill-educated And Nasty Woman Can Rubbish The Nicest, Kindest And Most Intelligent Man And No One Protests ... Men Seem To Be So Cowed That They Can't Fight Back, And It Is Time They Did.

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We Spend Our Lives Fighting To Get People Very Slightly More Stupid Than Ourselves To Accept Truths That The Great Men Have Always Known.

How Boring These Emotions Are That We're Caught In And Can't Get Free Of, No Matter How Much We Want To.

The Freudians Describe The Conscious As A Small Lit Area, All White, And The Unconscious As A Great Dark Marsh Full Of Monsters. In Their View, The Monsters Reach Up, Grab You By The Ankles, And Try To Drag You Down.

If A Fish Is The Movement Of Water Embodied, Given Shape, Then Cat Is A Diagram And Pattern Of Subtle Air.

The Difficulty Of Writing About Sex, For Women, Is That Sex Is Best When Not Thought About, Not Analysed.

But There Is No Doubt That To Attempt A Novel Of Ideas Is To Give Oneself A Handicap: The Parochialism Of Our Culture Is Intense. For Instance, Decade After Decade Bright Young Men And Women Emerge From Their Universities Able To Say Proudly: 'of Course I Know Nothing About German Literature.' It Is The Mode. The Victorians Knew Everything About German Literature, But Were Able With A Clear Conscience Not To Know Much About The French.

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Space Or Science Fiction Has Become A Dialect For Our Time.

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Democracies Have

... If You Have Nothing, You Are Free To Choose Among Dreams And Fantasies.

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People Don't Mind Immoral Messages. They Don't Mind Art Which Says That Murder Is Good, Cruelty Is Good, Sex For Sex's Sake Is Good. They Like It, Provided The Message Is Wrapped Up A Little. And They Like Messages Saying That Murder Is Bad, Cruelty Is Bad, And Love Is Love Is Love Is Love. What They Can't Stand Is To Be Told It All Doesn't Matter, They Can't Stand Formlessness.

If You Read, You Can Learn To Think For Yourself.

Think For Yourself

It Is Terrible To Destroy A Person's Picture Of Himself In The Interests Of Truth Or Some Other Abstraction.

Artists Are The Traditional Interpreters Of Dreams And Nightmares.

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Whatever You're Meant To Do, Do It Now. The Conditions Are Always Impossible.

Her Own Contempt For Any Forms Of Pressure Society Might Put On Her Was So Profound And Instinctive That She As Instinctively Despised Anyone Who Paid Tribute To Them.

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Things Are Not Quite So Simple Always As Black And White.

Black And White

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If You Understand Something, You Don't Forgive It, You Are The Thing Itself: Forgiveness Is For What You Don't Understand.

For She Was Of That Generation Who, Having Found Nothing In Religion, Had Formed Themselves Through Literature.

The Words Of A Wise Man's Mouth Are Gracious; But The Lips Of A Fool Will Swallow Up Himself.

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What Is A Hero Without Love For Mankind.

Perhaps It Is Not Such A Bad Marriage After All? There Are Innumerable Marriages Where Two People, Both Twisted And Wrong In Their Depths, Are Well Matched, Making Each Other Miserable In The Way They Need, In The Way The Pattern Of Their Life Demands.

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Novels Give You The Matrix Of Emotions, Give You The Flavour Of A Time In A Way Formal History Cannot.

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I Often Feel Like A Dinosaur. I Don't Get The Technology Thing At All. I Was On The Internet Not Long Ago For Barnes And Noble, And People Were Ringing Up From All Over The World - Australia, Canada, France. I Experienced It As An Informal Chat, Which Was Pleasant, But I Couldn't Quite Take It In. It Had A Strong Element Of Unreality. I Can't Be Bothered To Switch To A Computer At My Age, Though I Might Get Along With E-mail, Which Sounds Appealing.

Men Are Unwise And Curiously Planned.

Music Attacks My Inner Ear Like An Antagonist, It's Not My World.

As The Fishes That Are Taken In An Evil Net, And As The Birds That Are Caught In The Snare; So Are The Sons Of Men Snared In Evil Time, When It Falleth Suddenly Upon Them.

People Who Have Lived Through A War Know That As It Approaches, An At First Secret, Unacknowledged, Elation Begins, As If An Almost Inaudible Drum Is Beating ... An Awful, Illicit, Violent Excitement Is Abroad. Then The Elation Becomes Too Strong To Be Ignored Or Overlooked: Then Everyone Is Possessed By It.

Every Spendthrift Passion Has Its Attendant Courtiers.

Curse Not The King, No Not In Thy Thought; And Curse Not The Rich In Thy Bedchamber, For A Bird Of The Air Shall Carry The Voice, And That Which Hath Wings Shall Tell The Matter.

All My Friends' Mothers Were Appalling Women.

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Free Women," Said Anna, Wryly. She Added, With An Anger New To Molly, So That She Earned Another Quick Scrutinizing Glance From Her Friend: "they Still Define Us In Terms Of Relationships With Men, Even The Best Of Them.

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Do You Know What People Really Want? Everyone, I Mean. Everybody In The World Is Thinking: I Wish There Was Just One Other Person I Could Really Talk To, Who Could Really Understand Me, Who'd Be Kind To Me. That's What People Really Want, If They're Telling The Truth.

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You Have To Give Up A Great Deal Of Life, Your Personal Life, To Be A Writer.

Creative Writers

Creative Writing

The World Is Only Tolerable Because Of The Empty Places In It...when The World's Filled Up, We'll Have To Get Hold Of A Star. Any Star. Venus, Or Mars. Get Hold Of It And Leave It Empty. Man Needs An Empty Space Somewhere For His Spirit To Rest In.

Small Things Amuse Small Minds.

Anna, There's Something Very Arrogant About Insisting On The Right To Be Right.

This Is A Time When It Is Frightening To Be Alive, When It Is Hard To Think Of Human Beings As Rational Creatures. Everywhere We Look We See Brutality, Stupidity, Until It Seems That There Is Nothing Else To Be Seen But That--a Descent Into Barbarism, Everywhere, Which We Are Unable To Check. But I Think That While It Is True There Is A General Worsening, It Is Precisely Because Things Are So Frightening We Become Hypnotized, And Do Not Notice--or If We Notice, Belittle--equally Strong Forces On The Other Side, The Forces, In Short, Of Reason, Sanity And Civilization.

I Don't Think That The Feminist Movement Has Done Much For The Characters Of Women.

I Always Hated Tony Blair, From The Beginning.

There Is A Whole Generation Of Women And It Was As If Their Lives Came To A Stop When They Had Children. Most Of Them Got Pretty Neurotic - Because, I Think, Of The Contrast Between What They Were Taught At School They Were Capable Of Being And What Actually Happened To Them.

On The News Two Dozen Events Of Fantastically Different Importance Are Announced In Exactly The Same Tone Of Voice. The Voice Doesn't Discriminate Between A Divorce, A Horse Race, A War In The Middle East.

I'm Always Astounded At The Way We Automatically Look At What Divides And Separates Us. We Never Look At What People Have In Common.

Women Have An Extraordinary Ability To Withdraw From The Sexual Relationship, To Immunize Themselves Against It, In Such A Way That Their Men Can Be Left Feeling Let Down And Insulted Without Having Anything Tangible To Complain Of.

Knowing Cats, A Lifetime Of Cats, What Is Left Is A Sediment Of Sorrow Quite Different From That Due To Humans: Compounded Of Pain For Their Helplessness, Of Guilt On Behalf Of Us All.

Sometimes I Pick Up A Book And I Say: Well, So You've Written It First, Have You? Good For You. O.k., Then I Won't Have To Write It.

The Novel Has Become A Function Of The Fragmented Society, The Fragmented Consciousness. Human Beings Are So Divided, Are Becoming More And More Divided, And More Subdivided In Themselves, Reflecting The World, That They Reach Out Desperately, Not Knowing They Do It, For Information About Other Groups Inside Their Own Country, Let Alone About Groups In Other Countries. It Is A Blind Grasping Out For Their Own Wholeness, And The Novel-report Is A Means Toward It.

What Of October, That Ambiguous Month, The Month Of Tension, The Unendurable Month?

This World Is Run By People Who Know How To Do Things. They Know How Things Work. They Are Equipped. Up There, There's A Layer Of People Who Run Everything. But We - We're Just Peasants. We Don't Understand What's Going On, And We Can't Do Anything.

It Isn't Only The Terror Everywhere, And The Fear Of Being Conscious Of It, That Freezes People. It's More Than That. People Know They Are In A Society Dead Or Dying.

Sleep Is Harder To Reach And Thinner, And Sleeping Is No Longer The Drop Into The Black Pit All Oblivion Until The Alarm Clock, No, Sleep Is Thin And Fitful And Full Of Memories And Reminders And The Dark Is Never Dark Enough.

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.

I Think I Am At The End Of A Certain Phase Of My Life. What I'm On The Lookout For Now Is The Unexpected, For Things That Come From Outside And That I Never Thought Might Happen. Sometimes You Have To Watch For Them So You Don't Automatically Say No To The New, Simply Because You're In The Habit Of Saying No To Everything That Comes Along.

Is There Any Delight As Great As The Child's Discovering Ability?

The Older I Get The More Secrets I Have, Never To Be Revealed And This, I Know, Is A Common Condition Of People My Age. And Why All This Emphasis On Kissing And Telling? Kisses Are The Least Of It.

[some People Think] That Storytelling Is Telling Jokes. So They Have To Be Discouraged! Then Others Think That Storytelling-is Like An Encounter Group . . .

London Has Changed Enormously And So Have The English In The Past Decade. They're More Like Americans And More Like Europeans, Too. They're Always Eating Out, And When They're At Home They Don't Cook The Way They Did Ten Years Ago. They're All Sitting Around In Cafés, Like The Continentals, Drinking Coffee And Chattering And Watching The World Go By.

The First Casualty In Any War Is The Truth. In World War Ii, I Was Part Of A Group Of People Who Used To Meet Once A Week With The Sole Purpose Of Analyzing The News And Trying To Work Out What We Weren't Being Told. We Thought That We Were Clever, But We Had Absolutely No Idea What Was Really Going On. It Was Only Years Later That We Learned The True Story.

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