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.
Doris LessingRead
You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing should primarily be a source of personal satisfaction rather than a means to please others.
In this quote, Doris Lessing emphasizes the importance of self-fulfillment in the writing process. She suggests that true writing stems from a rich life experience and genuine personal expression, rather than merely seeking approval or validation from others. The quote serves as a reminder that a writer's life and experiences are the foundation for their work, and that authenticity is key to meaningful writing.
Themes
WritingSelf-ExpressionAuthenticityLife Experiences
In practice
Example use cases
A motivational speech about pursuing creative passions.
More from Doris Lessing
All quotes →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.
Doris LessingRead
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.
Doris LessingRead
There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.
Doris LessingRead
The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war.
Doris LessingRead
When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.
Doris LessingRead
Similar quotes
A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.
Italo CalvinoRead
The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
Jacques BarzunRead
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
Andre GideRead
A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
Duke EllingtonRead
I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don't necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That's something I discover in the course of writing and that's what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring.
George R. R. MartinRead
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
Gustave FlaubertRead