Doris Lessing

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

"I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'"

"In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools."

"Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time."

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."

"There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best."

"There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful."

"We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed."