I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism. P.D. James
What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared. Doris Lessing
What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula. Doris Lessing
What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible. Doris Lessing
This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything. Doris Lessing
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. Doris Lessing
What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. Doris Lessing
Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors. Doris Lessing
There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't. Doris Lessing
When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers. Doris Lessing
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. Doris Lessing
Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew. Doris Lessing
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. Doris Lessing
There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. Doris Lessing