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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.
-Doris Lessing
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We Spend Our Lives

Doris Lessing
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "we spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid..."

This quote by Doris Lessing reflects deeply on the theme of truth. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Truth, Stupid, Fighting, 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 truth and stupid. 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.

Views: 56365
Topic
Truth
Stupid
Fighting
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What A Luxury A Cat Is, The Moments Of Shocking And Startling Pleasure In A Day, The Feel Of The Beast, The Soft Sleekness Under Your Palm, The Warmth When You Wake On A Cold Night, The Grace And Charm Even In A Quite Ordinary Workaday Puss. Cat Walks Across Your Room, And In That Lonely Stalk You See Leopard Or Even Panther, Or It Turns Its Head To Acknowledge You And The Yellow Blaze Of Those Eyes Tells You What An Exotic Visitor You Have Here, In This Household Friend, The Cat Who Purrs As You Stroke, Or Rub His Chin, Or Scratch His Head.
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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?
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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
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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.
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Women Are Slaves To Their Beauty.
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What Society Doesn't Realize Is That In The Past, Ordinary People Respected Learning. They Respected Books, And They Don't Now, Or Not Very Much. That Whole Respect For Serious Literature And Learning Has Disappeared.
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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.
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I Wanted To Write About My Mother As She Should Have Been If She Had Not Been Messed Up By World War I.
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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.
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The Art Of Living In A Small Town Is One Of The Most Difficult To Acquire.
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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.
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Does Political Correctness Have A Good Side? Yes, It Does, For It Makes Us Re-examine Attitudes, And That Is Always Useful. The Trouble Is That, With All Popular Movements, The Lunatic Fringe So Quickly Ceases To Be A Fringe; The Tail Begins To Wag The Dog. For Every Woman Or Man Who Is Quietly And Sensibly Using The Idea To Examine Our Assumptions, There Are Twenty Rabble-rousers Whose Real Motive Is Desire For Power Over Others. The Fact That They See Themselves As Antiracists Or Feminists Or Whatever Does Not Make Them Any Less Rabble-rousers.
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Begging You
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You Remember With What You Are At The Time You Are Remembering.
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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.
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You Have To Be Grown Up, Really Grown Up, Not Merely In Years, To Understand Your Parents.
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It Is Terrible To Destroy A Person's Picture Of Himself In The Interests Of Truth Or Some Other Abstraction.
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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.
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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.
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I'll Be Pleased When I'm Dead. That Will Let Me Off Worrying About All These Wars.
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I Don't Think San Francisco Needs Defending. I Never Meet Anyone Who Doesn't Love The Place, Americans Or Others.
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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...
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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.
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I Am Increasingly Afflicted By Vertigo Where Words Mean Nothing
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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?"
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At Last I Understood That The Way Over, Or Through This Dilemma, The Unease At Writing About 'petty Personal Problems' Was To Recognize That Nothing Is Personal, In The Sense That It Is Uniquely One's Own. Writing About Oneself, One Is Writing About Others, Since Your Problems, Pains, Pleasures, Emotions—and Your Extraordinary And Remarkable Ideas—can't Be Yours Alone. [...] Growing Up Is After All Only The Understanding That One's Unique And Incredible Experience Is What Everyone Shares.
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Africa Gives You The Knowledge That Man Is A Small Creature, Among Other Creatures, In A Large Landscape.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Man Who Is He? Too Bad, To Be The Work Of God: Too Good For The Work Of Chance!
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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.
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Fall
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...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.
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Blood
Two
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Red
Married
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Want
Chance
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Thinking
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Sometimes
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Way
Coincidence
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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.
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The Freedom Of Women Was Achieved By Two Things: One, The Pill. Two... By Labour-saving Devices Like The Washing Machine. By Science, Not Feminism.
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Feminism
Pills
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Beautiful
Taken
Years
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Sticks
Talent
Capacity
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Found
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Dialect
Development
Association
Wisdom Is Better Than Weapons Of War; But One Sinner Destroyeth Much Good.
Bible
War
Weapons
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.
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Thinking
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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.
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Joy
Shapes
The Words Of A Wise Man's Mouth Are Gracious; But The Lips Of A Fool Will Swallow Up Himself.
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Mouths
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.
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When You Look At My Life, You Can Go Back To The Late 1930s, What I Saw Was, First Of All, Hitler, He Was Going To Live Forever. Mussolini Was In For 10,000 Years. You Had The Soviet Union, Which Was, By Definition, Going To Last Forever. There Was The British Empire -- Nobody Imagined It Could Come To An End. So Why Should One Believe In Any Kind Of Permanence?
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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.
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Thinking
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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
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
All I Do Is Give Interviews And Spend Time Being Photographed.
Giving
Interviews
Spend Time
I Wanted To Highlight That Whole Dreadful Process In Book Publishing That 'nothing Succeeds Like Success.'
Book
Succeed
Process
I've Won All The Prizes In Europe, Every Bloody One. I'm Delighted To Win Them All, The Whole Lot.
Winning
Europe
Bloody
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.
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Long
People
I'm Very Unhappy When I'm Not Writing.
Writing
Unhappy
What Is Charm Then? The Free Giving Of A Grace, The Spending Of Something Given By Nature In Her Role Of Spendthrift ... Something Extra, Superfluous, Unnecessary, Essentially A Power Thrown Away.
Giving
Grace
Roles
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.
Kissing
People
Secret
I Wasn't An Active Feminist In The '60s, Never Have Been.
Feminist
Active
Has Beens
I Think Novelists Perform Many Useful Tasks For Their Fellow Citizens, But One Of The Most Valuable Is This: To Enable Us To See Ourselves As Others See Us.
Thinking
Novelists
Tasks
I Hate Iran. I Hate The Iranian Government. It's A Cruel And Evil Government.
Hate
Government
Iran
My Mother Died Happily Of A Stroke In Her Seventies.
Mother
Strokes
Seventies
After A Certain Age - And For Some Of Us That Can Be Very Young - There Are No New People, Beasts, Dreams, Faces, Events: It Has All Happened Before.
Dream
People
Age
For The Last Third Of Life There Remains Only Work. It Alone Is Always Stimulating, Rejuvenating, Exciting And Satisfying.
Work
Age
Lasts
The Critics Slap Labels On You And Then Expect You To Talk Inside Their Terms.
Labels
Term
Critics
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.
Book
Writing
Firsts
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
We, As A Society, Can't Tolerate Very Much Difference.
Differences
Tolerate
Uniqueness
There's Always This Sense Of Incredulity That Writers Feel, Because They're Usually Living Flat And Ordinary Lives, Because They Have To.
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Flats
Feels
...or Like An Old Friend One Has Known Too Well And Doesn't Want To See.
Old Friends
Want
Wells
You Should Write, First Of All, To Please Yourself. You Shouldn't Care A Damn About Anybody Else At All. But Writing Can't Be A Way Of Life - The Important Part Of Writing Is Living. You Have To Live In Such A Way That Your Writing Emerges From It.
Writing
Important
Care
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
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
People Are Just Cannibals Unless They Leave Each Other Alone.
People
Cannibal
Golden Notebook
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
I Am Interested Only In Stretching Myself, On Living As Fully As I Can.
Stretching
I Can
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
A Public Library Is The Most Democratic Thing In The World. What Can Be Found There Has Undone Dictators And Tyrants.
Tyrants
Library
World
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
Time Is The River On Which The Leaves Of Our Thoughts Are Carried Into Oblivion.
Rivers
Literature
Oblivion
When I Started, There Were No Big Interviews, No Television, No Profiles And All That. The Publishers Were Quite Shockingly Uncommercial, But They Did Look After Their Writers.
Looks
Television
Interviews
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
You Are Taken, Shaken, By Moments When The Improbability Of Our Lives Comes Over You Like A Fever. Everything Is Remarkable, People, Living, Events Present Themselves To You With The Immediacy Of Players In Some Barbarous And Splendid Drama That It Seems We Are Part Of. You Have Been Given New Eyes.
Drama
Taken
Eye
Music Attacks My Inner Ear Like An Antagonist, It's Not My World.
Ears
World
Antagonist
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.
Thinking
Watches
Phases
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
A Story Is How We Construct Our Experiences.
Stories
Constructs
Better Counsel Comes Overnight.
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
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
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
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.
Clever
War
People
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
Is There Any Delight As Great As The Child's Discovering Ability?
Children
Delight
Ability
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'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
[some People Think] That Storytelling Is Telling Jokes. So They Have To Be Discouraged! Then Others Think That Storytelling-is Like An Encounter Group . . .
Thinking
People
Encounters
It's Amazing What You Find Out About Yourself When You Write In The First Person About Someone Very Different From You.
Writing
Different
Firsts
When A Book's Pattern And The Shape Of Its Inner Life Is As Plain To The Reader As It Is To The Author -- Then Perhaps It Is Time To Throw The Book Aside, As Having Had Its Day, And Start Again On Something New.
Book
Shapes
Patterns
We've Got To Believe In Our Beautiful Impossible Blueprints.
Beautiful
Believe
Impossible
Mother's Room, And Mother's Need For Privacy Become A Valuable Lesson In Respect For Other People's Rights.
Mother
Rights
People
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.
War
Years
Long
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
An Interim Report - That Is What An Autobiography Is.
Autobiography
Interim
Reports
What I Had That Others Didn't Was A Capacity For Sticking To It.
Capacity
I Didn't Go To School Much, So I Taught Myself What I Knew From Reading.
Reading
School
Taught
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
My Father Was In The First World War.
Father
War
World
The Most Exciting Periods Of Literature Have Always Been Those When The Critics Were Great.
Literature
Periods
Exciting
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
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
With A Library You Are Free, Not Confined By Temporary Political Climates. It Is The Most Democratic Of Institutions Because No One - But No One At All - Can Tell You What To Read And When And How.
Book
Reading
Thought Provoking
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
What Matters Most Is That We Learn From Living.
Life
Witty
What Matters
What Really Fascinates Me Is This Need That Is So Strong Now That If You Read A Work Of The Imagination You Instantly Have To Say, 'oh, What This Really Is Is So-and-so,' Reducing It To A Simple Formula.
Strong
Simple
Imagination
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
I Have To Conclude That Fiction Is Better At 'the Truth' Than A Factual Record.
Fiction
Records
Factual
...we Try To Have Things Both Ways. We’ve Always Refused To Live By The Book And The Rule; But Then Why Start Worrying Because The World Doesn’t Treat Us By Rule?
Book
Worry
Trying
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.
Men
Ideas
Giving
I Treasure Solitude. One Doesn't Have To Have Human Contact.
Solitude
Treasure
Contact
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
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
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
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
People
Looks
In The Writing Process, The More A Story Cooks, The Better.
Writing
Stories
Process
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
Capable People Do Not Understand Incapacity; Clever People Do Not Understand Stupidity.
Clever
People
Stupidity
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
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
Some People Obtain Fame, Others Deserve It.
People
Fame
Deserve
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
We Have Not Yet Developed A System Of Education That Is Not A System Of Indoctrination.
Education
Educational
Indoctrination
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
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
[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
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