Doris Lessing Quotes & Sayings

“Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.”

“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. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.”

“The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war.”

“Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.”

“When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.”

“Small things amuse small minds.”

“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.”

“Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.”

“September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.”

“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.”