9 Doris Lessing Quotes on Life

Doris Lessing quotes on life

6. Laughter is by definition healthy.

19. What matters most is that we learn from living.

26. 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.

31. The two women were alone in the London flat. 'The point is,' said Anna, as her friend came back from the telephone on the landing, 'the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up.'

34. What is so painful about that time is that nothing was disastrous. It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then - we went on dancing.

39. I knew, and it was an illumination - one of those things one has always known, but never understood before - that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh. If this goes, then the conviction of life goes too. But I could feel none of this. ... I knew I was moving into a new dimension, further from sanity than I had ever been.

43. None of you ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it.

55. Man - who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

60. I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.