It isn’t only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It’s more than that. People know they are in a socie… - Doris Lessing

You want me to begin a novel with The two women were alone in the London flat?

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate. But when the Gods explode, or err, or dissolve into flying clouds of gas, or shrink, or expand, or whatever else their fates might demand, then the minuscule items of their substance may in their small ways express — not protest, which of course is inappropriate to their station in life — but an acknowledgement of the existence of irony: yes, they may sometimes allow themselves — always with respect — the mildest possible grimace of irony.