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Literature Is Analysis After The Event.
-Doris Lessing
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Literature Is Analysis After

Doris Lessing
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Literature Is Analysis After The Event.

Understanding the Quote: "literature is analysis after the event...."

This quote by Doris Lessing reflects deeply on the theme of events. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Events, Analysis, Literature, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Doris Lessing interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing is celebrated for insightful thoughts on events and analysis. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Events
Analysis
Literature
More From Doris Lessing
Men Are Unwise And Curiously Planned.
Men
Unwise
The White Man Has Settled Like A Locust Over Africa, And, Like The Locusts In Early Morning, Cannot Take Flight For The Heaviness Of The Dew On Their Wings. But The Dew That Weights The White Man Is The Money That He Makes From Our Labor.
Morning
Men
White Man
The Critics Slap Labels On You And Then Expect You To Talk Inside Their Terms.
Labels
Term
Critics
Novels Give You The Matrix Of Emotions, Give You The Flavour Of A Time In A Way Formal History Cannot.
Giving
Way
Emotion
Time Is The River On Which The Leaves Of Our Thoughts Are Carried Into Oblivion.
Rivers
Literature
Oblivion
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
I Don't Know Much About Creative Writing Programs. But They're Not Telling The Truth If They Don't Teach, One, That Writing Is Hard Work And, Two, That You Have To Give Up A Great Deal Of Life, Your Personal Life, To Be A Writer.
Giving Up
Hard Work
Writing
When Old Settlers Say 'one Has To Understand The Country,' What They Mean Is, 'you Have To Get Used To Our Ideas About The Native.' They Are Saying In Effect, 'learn Our Ideas, Or Otherwise Get Out; We Don't Want You.'
Country
Mean
Ideas
You Know, Whenever Women Make Imaginary Female Kingdoms In Literature, They Are Always Very Permissive, To Use The Jargon Word, And Easy And Generous And Self-indulgent, Like The Relationships Between Women When There Are No Men Around. They Make Each Other Presents, And They Have Little Feasts, And Nobody Punishes Anyone Else. This Is The Female Way Of Going Along When There Are No Men About Or When Men Are Not In The Ascendant.
Men
Self
Female
Things Are Not Quite So Simple Always As Black And White.
Black And White
Simple
Black White
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.
Desire
Shifting
Youth
What Matters Most Is That We Learn From Living.
Life
Witty
What Matters
All Things Come Alike To All; There Is One Event To The Righteous, And To The Wicked; To The Good And To The Clean, And To The Unclean; To Him That Sacrificeth, And To Him That Sacrificeth Not.
Wicked
Events
Ecclesiastes
For Real Pleasure A Pleasure Resort Should Have No One In It But Its Legitimate Inhabitants, Oneself, And Perhaps One's Friends.
Real
Should Have
Pleasure
When Young I Did My Best To Undo That Bit Of The British Empire I Found Myself In: That Is, Old Southern Rhodesia.
Southern
Empires
Found
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.
Writing
Animal
Way
No One's Noticed. So Much Is Destroyed, We Can't Be Bothered.
Bothered
Destroyed
In Shanghai, I Saw Great Contrasts. On One Street There Would Be Impressive Shops Selling Copies Of The Latest Word In Glamorous European Fashion, And Around The Corner On A Back Street There Were Poor Families Crammed Into One Room With A Naked Light Bulb. One Evening I Heard A Chinese Family Singing "happy Birthday." It Was Weird. You Would Have Thought That They'd Have Their Own Happy Birthday Song. Every Dominant Society In The World - Whether It's French Or British Or American - Imposes Its Culture On Less Developed Societies.
Fashion
Song
Chinese
[on Her Mother:] I Was In Nervous Flight From Her Ever Since I Can Remember Anything, And From The Age Of Fourteen I Set Myself Obdurately Against Her In A Kind Of Inner Emigration From Everything She Represented. Girls Do Have To Grow Up, But Has This Battle Always Been So Implacable?
Girl
Mother
Growing Up
None Of You [men] Ask For Anything - Except Everything, But Just For So Long As You Need It.
Motivational
Men
Long
What Women Will Say To Other Women Grumbling In Their Kitchens And Complaining And Gossiping Or What They Make Clear In Their Masochism Is Often The Last Thing They Will Say Aloud - A Man May Overhear. Women Are The Cowards They Are Because They Have Been Semi-slaves For So Long.
Men
Long
Kitchen
A Public Library Is The Most Democratic Thing In The World. What Can Be Found There Has Undone Dictators And Tyrants.
Tyrants
Library
World
Little Tamar, Forget The Long Ago. We Are Here And We Are Now, And That Is All. We Are Making A New Start.
Long Ago
New Start
Littles
And It Does No Harm To Repeat, As Often As You Can, 'without Me The Literary Industry Would Not Exist: The Publishers, The Agents, The Sub-agents, The Sub-sub-agents, The Accountants, The Libel Lawyers, The Departments Of Literature, The Professors, The Theses, The Books Of Criticism, The Reviewers, The Book Pages- All This Vast And Proliferating Edifice Is Because Of This Small, Patronized, Put-down And Underpaid Person.'
Book
Writing
Criticism
How Boring These Emotions Are That We're Caught In And Can't Get Free Of, No Matter How Much We Want To.
Want
Matter
Emotion
Any Human Anywhere Will Blossom In A Hundred Unexpected Talents And Capacities Simply By Being Given The Opportunity To Do So.
Inspirational
Success
Opportunity
Wisdom Is Better Than Weapons Of War; But One Sinner Destroyeth Much Good.
Bible
War
Weapons
I Always Hated Tony Blair, From The Beginning.
Blair
Hated
The Whole Process Of Writing Is A Setting At A Distance. That Is The Value Of It - To The Writer, And To The People Who Read The Results Of This Process, Which Takes The Raw, The Individual, The Uncriticized, The Unexamined, Into The Realm Of The General.
Distance
Writing
People
Sometimes I Dislike Women, I Dislike Us All, Because Of Our Capacity For Not-thinking When It Suits Us; We Choose Not To Think When We Are Reaching Our For Happiness.
Thinking
Suits
Sometimes
Often The Mass Emotions Are Those Which Seem The Noblest, Best And Most Beautiful. And Yet, Inside A Year, Five Years, A Decade, Five Decades, People Will Be Asking, "how Could You Have Believed That?" Because Events Will Have Taken Place That Will Have Banished The Said Mass Emotions To The Dustbin Of History.
Beautiful
Taken
Years
All My Friends' Mothers Were Appalling Women.
Inspiring
Mothers Day
Mother
For There Is Never Any Way To Go But In.
Way
My Mother Died Happily Of A Stroke In Her Seventies.
Mother
Strokes
Seventies
Sometimes I Think What I Write Is Funny In Its Quiet Way.
Funny
Writing
Thinking
For She Was Of That Generation Who, Having Found Nothing In Religion, Had Formed Themselves Through Literature.
Generations
Literature
Found
Capable People Do Not Understand Incapacity; Clever People Do Not Understand Stupidity.
Clever
People
Stupidity
Pleasure Resorts Are Like Film Stars And Royalty... Embarrassed By The Figures They Cut In The Fantasies Of People Who Have Never Met Them.
Stars
Cutting
People
You Simply Don't Get To Be Wise, Mature, Etc., Unless You've Been A Raving Cannibal For Thirty Years Or So.
Wise
Years
Etc
... If You Have Nothing, You Are Free To Choose Among Dreams And Fantasies.
Dream
Fantasy
Ifs
All One's Life As A Young Woman One Is On Show, A Focus Of Attention, People Notice You. You Set Yourself Up To Being Noticed And Admired. And Then, Not Expecting It, You Become Middle-aged And Anonymous.
Women
People
Focus
We Are Several People Fitted Inside Each Other. Chinese Boxes. Our Bodies Are The Outside Box. Or The Inside One If You Like.
People
Chinese
Body
When The Print Revolution Occurred 400 Years Ago, Human Beings Lost A Certain Mental Capacity, Including A Sense Of Memory. In Africa Today, You Meet People Who Still Carry Everything In Their Heads, The Way We Used To. We Rely On Telephone Books, Address Books. We Have To Look Up Everything.
Memories
Book
People
I Do Not Think That Marriage Is One Of My Talents. I've Been Much Happier Unmarried Than Married.
Thinking
Married
Talent
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.
War
Thinking
People
The Point Is, That The Function Of The Novel Seems To Be Changing; It Has Become An Outpost Of Journalism; We Read Novels For Information About Areas Of Life We Don't Know - Nigeria, South Africa, The American Army, A Coal-mining Village, Coteries In Chelsea, Etc. We Read To Find Out What Is Going On. One Novel In Five Hundred Or A Thousand Has The Quality A Novel Should Have To Make It A Novel - The Quality Of Philosophy.
Philosophy
Army
Should Have
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.
Memories
Sleep
Dark
The Youth Do Not See The Old. They Are Not Programmed To See The Old, Who Are Cancelled, Negated, Wiped Out.
Thought Provoking
Youth
Provoking
A Woman Without A Man Cannot Meet A Man, Any Man, Of Any Age, Without Thinking, Even If It's For A Half-second, 'perhaps This Is The Man.
Men
Thinking
Age
Anna, There's Something Very Arrogant About Insisting On The Right To Be Right.
Arrogant
Anna
Insisting
I Am Interested Only In Stretching Myself, On Living As Fully As I Can.
Stretching
I Can
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.
Birthday
Time
Years
What I Did Have, Which Others Perhaps Didn't, Was A Capacity For Sticking At It, Which Really Is The Point, Not The Talent At All. You Have To Stick At It.
Sticks
Talent
Capacity
America Can Be A Very Hysterical Country Intellectually And Very Puritanical, Too. You Probably Have Fun In Private, But To The Rest Of The World You Seem To Hate Fun - To Be Big On Agendas And Short On Spontaneity. The Image You Present Is One Of Appalling Conformity. The Thought Police Is What You Are Ruled By.
Country
Fun
Hate
He Destroyed In Her The Knowing, Doubting, Sophisticated Ella, And Again And Again He Put Her Intelligence To Sleep, And With Her Willing Connivance, So That She Floated Darkly On Her Love For Him, On Her Naivety, Which Is Another Word For A Spontaneous Creative Faith. And When His Own Distrust Of Himself Destroyed This Woman-in-love, So That She Began Thinking, She Would Fight To Return To Naivety.
Sleep
Fighting
Thinking
A Simple Grateful Thought Turned Heavenwards Is The Most Perfect Prayer.
Thank You
Prayer
Grateful
I'll Be Pleased When I'm Dead. That Will Let Me Off Worrying About All These Wars.
War
Worry
Let Me
An Interim Report - That Is What An Autobiography Is.
Autobiography
Interim
Reports
Africa Gives You The Knowledge That Man Is A Small Creature, Among Other Creatures, In A Large Landscape.
Men
Giving
Landscape
A Foolhardy Lot, We Accepted It All, As We Always Do, Never Asked: "what Is Going To Happen To Us Now, With This Invention Of Print?" In The Same Way, We Never Thought To Ask, "how Will Our Lives, Our Way Of Thinking, Be Changed By The Internet, Which Has Seduced A Whole Generation With Its Inanities So That Even Quite Reasonable People Will Confess That, Once They Are Hooked, It Is Hard To Cut Free, And They May Find A Whole Day Has Passed In Blogging Etc?"
Cutting
Thinking
People
It Usually Takes Me A Year To Do A Book. A Year Or Eighteen Months.
Book
Years
Months
There Is Only One Way To Read, Which Is To Browse In Libraries And Bookshops, Picking Up Books That Attract You, Reading Only Those, Dropping Them When They Bore You, Skipping The Parts That Drag...
Book
Reading
Bores You
Everyone Knows That Where There Is Something That Is Capable Of Giving Profit, Then Exploited It Will Be.
Giving
Profit
Exploitation
The Most Exciting Periods Of Literature Have Always Been Those When The Critics Were Great.
Literature
Periods
Exciting
At No Time, Anywhere, Was The Population Of A Country Told The Truth: Facts About Events Trickled Into General Consciousness Much Later, If Ever.
Country
Events
Population
I Treasure Solitude. One Doesn't Have To Have Human Contact.
Solitude
Treasure
Contact
We, As A Society, Can't Tolerate Very Much Difference.
Differences
Tolerate
Uniqueness
What Is Terrible Is That After Every One Of The Phases Of My Life Is Finished, I Am Left With No More Than Some Banal Commonplace That Everyone Knows.
Life
Phases
Terrible
...she Thinks, For The Hundredth Time, That In Their Emotional Life All These Intelligent Men Use A Level So Much Lower Than Anything They Use For Work, That They Might Be Different Creatures.
Intelligent
Men
Emotional
There Is Only One Real Sin And That Is To Persuade Oneself That The Second Best Is Anything But Second Best.
Inspirational
Real
Sin
Small Things Amuse Small Minds.
Funny
Mind
Small Things
Some Books Are Not Read In The Right Way Because They Have Skipped A Stage Of Opinion, Assume A Crystallization Of Information In Society Which Has Not Yet Taken Place.
Book
Taken
Information
In The Writing Process, The More The Story Cooks, The Better. The Brain Works For You Even When You Are At Rest. I Find Dreams Particularly Useful. I Myself Think A Great Deal Before I Go To Sleep And The Details Sometimes Unfold In The Dream.
Dream
Sleep
Writing
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.
Black And White
Men
Differences
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.
Art
Sex
Love Is
We Always Seem To Be Surprised By Events, Especially By Catastrophes, But Also By Wonderful Events. Look At 1990, The Year That The Soviet Union Collapsed And Apartheid In South Africa Collapsed And The Berlin Wall Came Down. I Don't Know Anyone Who Foresaw Those Events. It Seems To Me That As A Species We Are Constantly Trying To Adapt Ourselves To The Unexpected. In The Meantime, We Talk As If We Are In Control, And We're Not. This Seems To Me To Be The Truth About The Twentieth Century.
Wall
Trying
Unexpected
So Love Is Rest? The Cosy Corner? The Little Nook? Sometimes It Ought To Be. Sometimes It Is.
Love Is
Littles
Sometimes
I Hated The 1960's Feminists," She Says. "they Were Dogmatists, You See. In Comes Ideology, And Out Goes Common Sense. This Is My Experience Of Life.
Common Sense
Feminist
Hated
The Storyteller Is Deep Inside Everyone Of Us. The Story-maker Is Always With Us. Let Us Suppose Our World Is Attacked By War, By The Horrors That We All Of Us Easily Imagine. Let Us Suppose Floods Wash Through Our Cities, The Seas Rise . . . But The Storyteller Will Be There, For It Is Our Imaginations Which Shape Us, Keep Us, Create Us - For Good And For Ill. It Is Our Stories That Will Recreate Us, When We Are Torn, Hurt, Even Destroyed. It Is The Storyteller, The Dream-maker, The Myth-maker, That Is Our Phoenix, That Represents Us At Our Best, And At Our Most Creative.
Dream
Hurt
War
I Hate Iran. I Hate The Iranian Government. It's A Cruel And Evil Government.
Hate
Government
Iran
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
Realizing
Social
Envy Has Always Hidden Behind Moral Indignation.
Envy
Moral
Behinds
I've Always Disliked Words Like Inspiration. Writing Is Probably Like A Scientist Thinking About Some Scientific Problem, Or An Engineer About An Engineering Problem.
Inspiration
Writing
Thinking
Women Often Get Dropped From Memory, And Then History.
Memories
Women
There Is Only One Way To Read, Which Is To Browse In Libraries And Bookshops, Picking Up Books That Attract You, Reading Only Those, Dropping Them When They Bore You, Skipping The Parts That Drag-and Never, Never Reading Anything Because You Feel You Ought, Or Because It Is Part Of A Trend Or A Movement. Remember That The Book Which Bores You When You Are Twenty Or Thirty Will Open Doors For You When You Are Forty Or Fifty-and Vise Versa. Don’t Read A Book Out Of Its Right Time For You.
Book
Reading
Doors
Loneliness, She Thought, Was Craving For Other People's Company. But She Did Not Know That Loneliness Can Be An Unnoticed Cramping Of The Spirit For Lack Of Companionship.
Loneliness
People
Spirit
Coincidences Are God's Way Of Remaining Anonymous.
Spiritual
Way
Coincidence
As You Get Older, You Don't Get Wiser. You Get Irritable.
Wiser You
Wiser
Basic Facts Tend Always To Be Those Most Easily Overlooked.
Facts
Overlooked
Cats Mean Kittens, Plentiful And Frequent.
Mean
Cat
Kitten
I Don't Think That The Feminist Movement Has Done Much For The Characters Of Women.
Character
Thinking
Feminist
Space Or Science Fiction Has Become A Dialect For Our Time.
Time
Space
Fiction
I Have To Conclude That Fiction Is Better At 'the Truth' Than A Factual Record.
Fiction
Records
Factual
The Golden Notebook For Some Reason Surprised People But It Was No More Than You Would Hear Women Say In Their Kitchens Every Day In Any Country... I Was Really Astounded That Some People Were Shocked.
Notebook
Country
People
Is There Any Delight As Great As The Child's Discovering Ability?
Children
Delight
Ability
The Old Watch The Young With Anguish, Pain, Fear. Above All What Each Has Learned Is What Things Cost, What Has To Be Paid.
Pain
Watches
Cost
What I Really Can't Stand About The Feminist Revolution Is That It Produced Some Of The Smuggest, Most Unselfcritical People The World Has Ever Seen. They Are Horrible.
People
Feminist
World
Argument Does Not Teach Children Or The Immature. Only Time And Experience Does That.
Children
Immature
Doe
Hitler Admired Stalin, Quite Properly Seeing Himself As A Mere Infant In Crime Compared To His Great Exemplar.
Crime
Infant
Mere
Borrowing Is Not Much Better Than Begging; Just As Lending With Interest Is Not Much Better Than Stealing.
Begging You
Stealing
Lending
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.
People
Perspective
Needs
A Public Library Is The Most Democratic Thing In The World. What Can Be Found There Has Undone Dictators And Tyrants: Demagogues Can Persecute Writers And Tell Them What To Write As Much As They Like, But They Cannot Vanish What Has Been Written In The Past, Though They Try Often Enough...people Who Love Literature Have At Least Part Of Their Minds Immune From Indoctrination. If You Read, You Can Learn To Think For Yourself.
Book
Writing
Thinking
Why Were The Europeans Bothered About The Soviet Union At All? It Was Nothing To Do With Us. China Had Nothing To Do With Us. Why Were We Not Building, Without Reference To The Soviet Union, A Good Society In Our Own Countries? But No, We Were All - In One Way Or Another - Obsessed With The Bloody Soviet Union, Which Was A Disaster. What People Were Supporting Was Failure. And Continually Justifying It.
Country
People
Unions
If A Fish Is The Movement Of Water Embodied, Given Shape, Then Cat Is A Diagram And Pattern Of Subtle Air.
Cat
Air
Water
I Do Not Think Writers Or Anybody Would 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.
Writing
Thinking
Down And
For With My Intuition I Knew That This Man Was Repeating A Pattern Over And Over Again: Courting A Woman With His Intelligence And Sympathy, Claiming Her Emotionally; Then, When She Began To Claim In Return, Running Away. And The Better A Woman Was, The Sooner He Would Begin To Run. I Knew This With My Intuition, And Yet I Sat There In My Dark Room, Looking At The Hazed Wet Brilliance Of The Purple London Night Sky, Longing With My Whole Being.
Running
Dark
Night
I Hate To Sound Clichéd, But I Do See Life As A Journey. How Else Can You See It?
Hate
Journey
Life Journey
Some People Obtain Fame, Others Deserve It.
People
Fame
Deserve
Remember That The Book Which Bores You When You Are Twenty Or Thirty Will Open Doors For You When You Are Forty Or Fifty - And Vise Versa. Don’t Read A Book Out Of Its Right Time For You.
Book
Doors
Bores You
And Then, Not Expecting It, You Become Middle-aged And Anonymous. No One Notices You. You Achieve A Wonderful Freedom. It Is A Positive Thing. You Can Move About Unnoticed And Invisible.
Moving
Aging
Wonderful
What's Terrible Is To Pretend That Second-rate Is First-rate. To Pretend That You Don't Need Love When You Do; Or You Like Your Work When You Know Quite Well You're Capable Of Better.
Love
Inspirational
Needs
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.
Block
Mean
Essence
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.
Numbers
Focus
Alternatives
The Worst Superstition Is To Consider Our Own Tolerable.
Superstitions
Worst
Tolerable
Think Wrongly, If You Please, But In All Cases Think For Yourself.
Inspirational
Creativity
Thinking
I Never Stopped Reading.
Reading
You Have To Give Up A Great Deal Of Life, Your Personal Life, To Be A Writer.
Giving Up
Creative Writers
Creative Writing
Humanity's Legacy Of Stories And Storytelling Is The Most Precious We Have. All Wisdom Is In Our Stories And Songs. A Story Is How We Construct Our Experiences.
Song
Humanity
Legacy
Living In A Small Town Anywhere Means Preserving One's Self Behind A Mask.
Mean
Self
Towns
I Wasn't An Active Feminist In The '60s, Never Have Been.
Feminist
Active
Has Beens
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.
Country
Mean
Knowing
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.
People
Example
Fiction
September 11 Was Terrible, But If One Goes Back Over The History Of The Ira, What Happened To The Americans Wasn't That Terrible.
September 11
Ira
Terrible
People Who Love Literature Have At Least Part Of Their Minds Immune From Indoctrination. If You Read, You Can Learn To Think For Yourself.
Thinking
People
Mind
You Know, When I Was A Girl, The Idea That The British Empire Could Ever End Was Absolutely Inconceivable. And It Just Disappeared, Like All The Other Empires.
Girl
Ideas
Empires
If She Had Been Left Alone She Would Have Gone On, In Her Own Way, Enjoying Herself Thoroughly, Until People Found One Day That She Had Turned Imperceptibly Into One Of Those Women Who Have Become Old Without Ever Having Been Middle Aged: A Little Withered, A Little Acid, Hard As Nails, Sentimentally Kindhearted, And Addicted To Religion Or Small Dogs.
Dog
People
One Day
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.
Pain
Cat
Knowing
There Are Two Kinds Of Humanity, Those Who Dream And Those Who Don't, And Both Tend To Despise, Or To Tolerate, The Other.
Dream
Two
Humanity
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.
Two
People
Depth
As Soon As I Got The Nobel Prize My Back Collapsed And I Was In Hospital.
Nobel
Prize
Nobel Prize
The Human Community Is Evolving... . We Can Survive Anything You Care To Mention. We Are Supremely Equipped To Survive, To Adapt And Even In The Long Run To Start Thinking.
Running
Thinking
Long
I Was In New York When Clinton Was Elected The First Time, And Everyone I Knew Was In A State Of Mad Euphoria. I Wondered What Had Happened To My Hard-headed Friends? Almost Everyone I Knew Was Drunk On This Great White Hope. The Next Time I Was In New York, No One Had A Good Word To Say About Clinton, But Everyone Was In Love With Hillary. She Was The Last Word. It's All So Unreal. Of Course, It's No Different In England. Here Everyone Was Besotted With Tony Blair. He Was A New Face. Do People Never Learn?
New York
White
People
Writers Do Not Come Out Of Houses Without Books.
Book
Reading
House
Trust No Friend Without Faults, And Love A Woman, But No Angel.
Love
Trust
Angel
In University They Don't Tell You That The Greater Part Of The Law Is Learning To Tolerate Fools.
Memorable
Learning
College
I Was Filled With Such A Dangerous Delicious Intoxication That I Could Have Walked Straight Off The Steps Into The Air, Climbing On The Strength Of My Own Drunkeness Into The Stars. And The Intoxication, As I Knew Even Then, Was The Recklessness Of Infinite Possibility.
Stars
Air
Climbing
[the Golden Notebook] Was Not A Trumpet For Women's Liberation. It Described Many Female Emotions Of Aggression, Hostility, Resentment. It Put Them Into Print. Apparently What Many Women Were Thinking, Feeling, Experiencing, Came As A Great Surprise. Instantly A Lot Of Very Ancient Weapons Were Unleashed, The Main Ones, As Usual, Being On The Theme Of "she Is Unfeminine", "she Is A Man-hater".
Notebook
Men
Thinking
Time And Distance From The First And Second World Wars Doesn't Seem To Lessen Their Horrors.
War
Distance
World
But 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. They Are Refusing Emotion Because At The End Of Very Emotion Are Property, Money, Power. They Work And Despise Their Work, And So Freeze Themselves. They Love But Know That It's A Half- Love Or A Twisted Love, And So They Freeze Themselves.
Power
People
Dying
I Would Not Be At All Surprised To Find Out . . . That The Dimensions Of Buildings Affect Us In Ways We Don't Guess.
Way
Dimensions
Building
All Politicians Are Not The Same. I've Never Felt That Way. What Is The Same Is That Voters Get Very Excited About New Faces, Like Clinton And Blair - And They Have Unrealistic Expectations That The World Will Change Overnight. A Cynical Old Hand Like Myself Knows That It Won't.
Expectations
Cynical
World
What Is A Hero Without Love For Mankind.
Love
Hero
Mankind
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.
Men
Feelings
Complaining
Literature Is Analysis After The Event.
Events
Analysis
Literature
I Spend A Good Deal Of Time Wondering How We Will Seem To The People Who Come After Us. This Is Not An Idle Interest, But A Deliberate Attempt To Strengthen The Power Of That "other Eye," Which We Can Use To Judge Ourselves.
Eye
People
Judging
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. This Is What Our Function Is.
Jobs
Book
Thinking
Most Novels, If They Are Successful At All, Are Original In The Sense That They Report The Existence Of An Area Of Society, A Type Of Person, Not Yet Admitted To The General Literate Consciousness.
Successful
Consciousness
Type
I Wanted To Highlight That Whole Dreadful Process In Book Publishing That 'nothing Succeeds Like Success.'
Book
Succeed
Process
One Certainty We All Accept Is The Condition Of Being Uncertain And Insecure.
Insecure
Accepting
Uncertain
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.
Strong
Technology
Long
I Wonder Why Do Wars Suddenly Start And Suddenly Stop, And Why Do We Brits And You Americans Get Involved In Some Of Them And Not In Others? Is It Possible That The Arms Manufacturers Quietly Foment Wars Without Us Knowing? Dropping Bombs Is A Very Profitable Business For Them. Gore Vidal Was Talking About This The Other Day, And He Made A Lot Of Sense. Whenever American Policy Seems Inscrutable, He Said, Remember The Military-industrial Complex. He's The One Who Should Have Been President.
War
President
Remember
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.
Drinking
Coffee
Home
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.
Strong
Thinking
Civilization
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.
Stars
Men
Filled Up
My Father Was In The First World War.
Father
War
World
There's Always This Sense Of Incredulity That Writers Feel, Because They're Usually Living Flat And Ordinary Lives, Because They Have To.
Ordinary
Flats
Feels
Our Society Is Dependent On Some Precarious Mechanisms, And They Are Very Dicey. They Can Easily Collapse.
Our Society
Collapse
Dependent
When You're Young You Think That You're Going To Sail Into A Lovely Lake Of Quietude And Peace. This Is Profoundly Untrue.
Thinking
Lakes
Lovely
For The Last Third Of Life There Remains Only Work. It Alone Is Always Stimulating, Rejuvenating, Exciting And Satisfying.
Work
Age
Lasts
It Is My Belief...that The Talents Every Child Has, Regardless Of His Official 'i.q,' Could Stay With Him Through Life, To Enrich Him And Everybody Else, If These Talents Were Not Regarded As Commodities With A Value In The Success-stakes.
Children
Belief
Talent
Women's Emotions Are Still Fitted For A Kind Of Society That No Longer Exists. My Deep Emotions, My Real Ones, Are To Do With My Relationship With A Man. One Man. But I Don't Live That Kind Of Life, And I Know Few Women Who Do. So What I Feel Is Irrelevant And Silly.
Real
Women
Silly
Advice To Young Writers? Always The Same Advice: Learn To Trust Our Own Judgment, Learn Inner Independence, Learn To Trust That Time Will Sort The Good From The Bad– Including Your Own Bad.
Advice
Independence
Young Writers
Don't Read A Book Out Of Its Right Time For You.
Book
Right Time
Bookshops
The Words Of A Wise Man's Mouth Are Gracious; But The Lips Of A Fool Will Swallow Up Himself.
Wise
Men
Mouths
There Is A Great Line Of Women Stretching Out Behind You Into The Past, And You Have To Seek Them Out And Find Them In Yourself And Be Conscious Of Them.
Women
Past
Lines
Advice To Young Writers? Always The Same Advice: Learn To Trust Our Own Judgment.
Advice
Young Writers
Judgment
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.
Running
People
World
The Smell Of Manure, Of Sun On Foliage, Of Evaporating Water, Rose To My Head; Two Steps Farther, And I Could Look Down Into The Vegetable Garden Enclosed Within Its Tall Pale Of Reeds - Rich Chocolate Earth Studded Emerald Green, Frothed With The White Of Cauliflowers, Jeweled With The Purple Globes Of Eggplant And The Scarlet Wealth Of Tomatoes.
Summer
Garden
Eggplant
We Are All Creatures Of The Stars.
Stars
Creatures
For Women Like Me, Integrity Isn't Chastity, It Isn't Fidelity, It Isn't Any Of The Old Words. Integrity Is The Orgasm. That Is Something I Haven't Any Control Over.
Integrity
Fidelity
Chastity
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.
Children
School
Thinking
The Nobel Prize Is Run By A Self-perpetuated Committee. They Vote For Themselves And Get The World's Publishing Industry To Jump To Their Tune.
Running
Self
Tunes
In The Writing Process, The More A Story Cooks, The Better.
Writing
Stories
Process
I Didn't Go To School Much, So I Taught Myself What I Knew From Reading.
Reading
School
Taught
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.
Mean
Thinking
People
A Woman Writer, Quitting Love Before Literature When Love Lets Her Down, Will Put Literature Before Love.
Women
Love Is
Literature
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.
People
Magic
Wavelength
Because I Was Permanently Confused, Dissatisfied, Unhappy, Tormented By Inadequacy, Driven By Wanting Towards Every Kind Of Impossible Future, The Attitude Of Mind Described By 'tolerantly Amused Eyes' Was Years Away From Me. I Don't Think I Really Saw People Then, Except As Appendages To My Needs. It's Only Now, Looking Back, That I Understood, But At The Time 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.
Attitude
Confused
Eye
If We Were To Put Into Practice What We Know ... But That Is The Point.
Practice
Knows
Ifs
Growing Up Is, After All, Only The Understanding That One's Unique And Incredible Experience Is What Every One Shares.
Growing Up
Women
Unique
All I Do Is Give Interviews And Spend Time Being Photographed.
Giving
Interviews
Spend Time
Parents Should Leave Books Lying Around Marked "forbidden" If They Want Their Children To Read.
Children
Lying
Inspiration
Mother's Room, And Mother's Need For Privacy Become A Valuable Lesson In Respect For Other People's Rights.
Mother
Rights
People
This Is An Inevitable And Easily Recognizable Stage In Every Revolutionary Movement: Reformers Must Expect To Be Disowned By Those Who Are Only Too Happy To Enjoy What Has Been Won For Them.
Movement
Revolutionary
Stage
They Can't Give A Nobel To Someone Who's Dead So I Think They Were Probably Thinking They Had Better Give It To Me Now.
Thinking
Giving
Nobel
I Wanted To Write About My Mother As She Should Have Been If She Had Not Been Messed Up By World War I.
Mother
War
Writing
Recently, The Science Fiction Writer Arthur C. Clarke Talked About The Ways The Lives Of Human Beings Will Be Changed In The Next Century. At Least Half Of Them I Didn't Understand At All, Though I'm Sure That Kids Today Would Know Exactly What He Meant. I'm Somewhere In The Past. I Do Think, However, That Our Brains Have Been Damaged By Technology. I Meet Kids Who Don't Seem To Be Capable Of Reading A Long Sentence, Much Less A Long Book.
Book
Reading
Kids
There Is No Doubt Fiction Makes A Better Job Of The Truth.
Jobs
Truth
Writing
Mostly Getting Old Is Boring. I Hate The Stiffness In The Bones. I Was Physically Arrogant For Years. I Don't Like It Now That I Have Difficulty Getting Around. But A Certain Equanimity Sets In, A Certain Detachment. Things Seem Less Desperately Important Than They Once Did, And That's A Pleasure.
Hate
Years
Important
The 1960s Was Probably The First Time In History That Young People Were Recognized As A Big Group Of Consumers And As A Commercial Proposition For Madison Avenue. Advertising Played A Major Role In Creating The Ethos Of That Era - The Idea That, "here It Is, And You Can Have It Now." I Know That Many Kids Thought That The Ethos Of The 1960s Was Due To Their Own Peculiar Virtues, But, In Fact, It Had A Lot To Do With The Realities Of The Marketplace And Commerce.
Kids
Reality
People
What The Feminists Want Of Me Is Something They Haven't Examined Because It Comes From Religion. They Want Me To Bear Witness.
Feminist
Want
Bears
It Is Not Always Possible To Know, When You Make A Note Of An Event, Or A State Of Mind, How This May Strike Someone Perhaps Ten Thousand Years Later.
Years
Mind
Events
Political Correctness Is The Natural Continuum From The Party Line. What We Are Seeing Once Again Is A Self-appointed Group Of Vigilantes Imposing Their Views On Others. It Is A Heritage Of Communism, But They Don't Seem To See This.
Party
Views
Self
Once I Read Autobiography As What The Writer Thought About His Or Her Life. Now I Think, 'this Is What They Thought At That Time'. An Interim Report - That Is What An Autobiography Is.
Thinking
Autobiography
Interim
Writers, And Particularly Female Writers, Have To Fight For The Conditions They Need To Work.
Fighting
Female Writers
Needs
The Kitten Was Six Weeks Old. It Was Enchanting, A Delicate Fairy-tale Cat, Whose Siamese Genes Showed In The Shape Of The Face, Ears, Tail, And The Subtle Lines Of Its Body. [...] She Sat, A Tiny Thing, In The Middle Of A Yellow Carpet, Surrounded By Five Worshipppers, Not At All Afraid Of Us. Then She Stalked Around That Floor Of The House, Inspecting Every Inch Of It, Climbed Up On To My Bed, Crept Under The Fold Of A Sheet, And Was At Home.
Home
Cat
Yellow
There Are Many Feminists Who Work In The Media, And They Think That Feminism Is Very Important. It Is In Their Own Lives, But Mostly Feminism Has Had An Impact Among Privileged Women In The Advanced Western Countries. For The Most Part, It Hasn't Begun To Touch The Lives Of Poor And Working Women In The Third World, And That Distresses Me.
Country
Thinking
Feminist
I Have Kept Diaries, Of Course, But They Can't Be Read For Quite A Long Time. I'm Always Curious About People Who Are Fascinated By Writers' Lives. It Seems To Me That We're Always In Our Books, Quite Nakedly. I Wonder, Too, Does The Private Life Really Matter? Who Cares What Is Known About You And What Isn't? Even When You Make Public Something That's Been Private, Most People Don't Get It - Not Unless They're The Same Generation And Have Gone Through More Or Less The Same Experiences. So, In A Sense, We're All Private, By Definition.
Book
Long
People
She Was Thirty-nine. No, She Did Not Envy Her Eighteen-year- Old Self At All. But She Did Envy, Envied Every Day More Bitterly, That Young Girl's Genuine Independence, Largeness, Scope, And Courage.
Girl
Self
Years
Whenever I Met Anyone Who Knew Anything, I Would Bore Them Stiff Until They Told Me What They Knew.
Mets
Bores
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