The stinting poverty in which they lived was unbearable; it was destroying them. It did not mean that there was not enough to eat: it meant that ever… - Doris Lessing

But when you get down to it, it’s all a lie. You sit here writing and writing, but no one can see it — that’s arrogant, I told you so before. And you aren’t even honest enough to let yourself be what you are — everything’s divided off and split up. So what’s the use of patronising me and saying: You’re in a bad phase. If you’re not in a bad phase, then it’s because you can’t be in a phase, you take care to divide yourself into compartments. If things are a chaos, then that’s what they are. I don’t think there’s a pattern anywhere — you are just making patterns, out of cowardice. I think people aren’t good at all, they are cannibals, and when you get down to it no one cares about anyone else. All the best people can be good to one other person or their families. But that’s egotism, it isn’t being good. We aren’t any better than the animals, we just pretend to be.

I was taken around and shown things as a "useful idiot" […] that’s what my role was […] I can’t understand why I was so gullible.

For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not.