Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

Doris May Lessing CH (née Tayler; born 22 October 1919) is a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).

Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In doing so the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest ever person to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British Literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Read more about Doris Lessing:  Awards, List of Works

Famous quotes by doris lessing:

    Children can’t be a center of life and a reason for being. They can be a thousand things that are delightful, interesting, satisfying, but they can’t be a wellspring to live from. Or they shouldn’t be.
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don’t seem to see this.
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to sudden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    For my father, who used to sit, hour after hour, night after night, outside our house in Africa, watching the stars ‘Well,’ he would say, ‘if we blow ourselves up, there’s plenty more where we came from!’
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)