Doris Lessing

“I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world,' but we had children by t...”

“The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.”

“There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.”

“Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.”

“I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase.”

“I'm just a story teller.”

“I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.”

“I do have a sense, and I've never not had it, of how easily things can vanish.”

“I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.”

“In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.”