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.
Doris LessingNone of you [men] ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it.
Doris LessingThe 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.
Doris LessingWhat 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.
Doris LessingOur society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.
Doris LessingA 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?"
Doris Lessing