I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal. - Doris Lessing

There are certain types of people who are political out of a kind of religious reason [...] I think it's fairly common among socialists: They are, in fact, God-seekers, looking for the kingdom of God on earth. A lot of religious reformers have been like that, too. It's the same psychological set, trying to abolish the present in favor of some better future — always taking it for granted that there is a better future. If you don't believe in heaven, then you believe in socialism. When I was in my real Communist phase, I and the people around me really believed — but, of course, this makes us certifiable — that something like 10 years after World War II, the world would be Communist and perfect.

My major aim was to shape a book which would make its own comment, a wordless statement: to talk through the way it was shaped. As I have said, this was not noticed

I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.