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
I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing is about expression rather than a view of positive or negative outcomes.
Doris Lessing emphasizes that the act of storytelling transcends the dichotomy of optimism and pessimism. For her, the focus lies in the narrative itself and the authenticity of the experience rather than fitting it into a specific emotional framework, indicating that the essence of storytelling is to convey truth and complexity of human experience.
Themes
StorytellingNarrativeArtWritingExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, to encourage students to focus on their story rather than fear failure.
More from Doris Lessing
All quotes βIn 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
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.
Doris LessingRead
Similar quotes
Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations ... Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone.
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I have a deep-seated distrust and even contempt for people who are driven by ambition to conquer the world β¦ those who cannot control themselves and produce vast amounts of crap that no one cares about. I find it unattractive. I like the Zen artists: theyβd do some work, and then theyβd stop for a while.
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A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
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The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.
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I always prefer photographing in available light β or Rembrandt-light I like to call it β so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.
Alfred EisenstaedtRead
I grew up never seeing myself on-screen, and it's really important to me to give people who look like me a chance to see themselves. I want to see myself as the hero of any story. I want to see myself save the world from the bomb.
Sandra OhRead