Doris Lessing Giving Quotations

All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.

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 before I popped off.

if you understand something, you don't forgive it, you are the thing itself: forgiveness is for what you don't understand.

You have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

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.

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.

Everyone knows that where there is something that is capable of giving profit, then exploited it will be.

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel.

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.

Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.