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
Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the value of knowledge and the desire to learn from others.
Doris Lessing's quote emphasizes the importance of curiosity and the relentless pursuit of knowledge. It highlights a proactive approach to learning, where the speaker actively engages with knowledgeable individuals to extract valuable insights. The quote suggests that one should never hesitate to ask questions and seek information, as knowledge is a powerful tool for personal growth.
In practice
In a classroom setting to encourage students to engage with knowledgeable guests.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover.
There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose - without stopping to work out why.
People rarely speak of children; you hear of 'cohort groups' and 'standard variations,' but you don't hear much of boys who miss their cats or 6-year-olds who have to struggle with potato balls.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Read the Bible, read the Bible! Let no religious book take its place. Through all my perplexities and distresses, I seldom read any other book, and I as rarely felt the want of any other.
We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)
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