We were saddened to hear this week that novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing has died. Probably best known for her novel The Golden Notebook, Doris was born in 1919 in Persia (now Kermanshah, Iran) and turned to writing at the age of 15, selling stories to magazines in South Africa. As you might expect from such a person, Doris imparted many words of wisdom and we have put together our favourites here.
"When The Golden Notebook came out nobody noticed that it was quite an interesting form I was using, they were much too obsessed by the fact that I was meant to be anti-male, this ball-breaker." – in conversation with 'the Guardian' in 2007, shortly after winning the Nobel Prize)
"There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth." – 
'Under My Skin'
"Oh Christ! … I couldn't care less." – (Immediately after winning the Nobel Prize, when asked by a journalist how it felt)
"Laughter is by definition healthy" – 'The Summer Before the Dark'
"Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible."
“With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how.”
“You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life – the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.”
“You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.”
“Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad.”
Pictured: Doris Lessing not caring about her Nobel Prize
