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Date of Birth
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22-October-1919
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Place of Birth
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Kermanshah
(Iran, Kermanshah Province)
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Nationality
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United Kingdom
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Also know as
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Doris May Lessing, Doris Tayler, Doris Lessing; et. al., Doris Lessin, Doris May Taylor, Doris May Tayler, Jane Somers
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Profession
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Writer, Novelist, Author, Poet, Playwright, Biographer, Librettist
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Quotes
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- The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
- That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life, but in a new way.
- What is a hero without love for mankind.
- This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we --we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.
- 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.
- Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.
- Better Counsel comes overnight.
- The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.
- Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
- A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.
- It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
- Literature is analysis after the event.
- It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
- In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
- Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
- Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
- Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!
- If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
- What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate, that you don't need love when you do or that you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
- Pearls mean tears.
- Laughter is by definition healthy.
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Doris May Lessing CH was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives.
Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, 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 person ever 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".
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