Oh Christ. I couldn't care less. … I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, s… - Doris Lessing

But my poor Saul, there’s no help for you, you’re heading straight for it. What about all those marvelous people we know, aged about fifty or sixty? Well, there are a few of them…marvelous, mature, wise people. Real people, the phrase is, radiating serenity. And how did they get to be that way? Well, we know, don’t we? Every blood one of them’s got a history of emotional crime, oh the sad bleeding corpses that litter the road to maturity of the wise, serene man or woman of fifty-odd! You simply don’t get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you’ve been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.