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"I was realizing something I should have known by using my intelligence, without ever having gone to their flat at all: that the ties between Nelson and his wife are bitterly close, and never to be broken in their lives. They are tied by the closest of all bonds, neurotic pain-giving; the experience of pain dealt and received; pain as an aspect of love; apprehended as a knowledge of what the world is, what growth is.Nelson is about to leave his wife; he will never leave her. She will wail at being rejected and abandoned; she does not know she will never be rejected."
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"The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.''Do I look like a liar?''You look like you enjoy lying to women,' said the girl, and into her words there crept unawares a touch of the old anxiety, because she really did believe that her young man enjoyed lying to women."
"For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and-by some sad, strange irony-it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy."
"We came, Takver thought, from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance. It is because he comes from so far away that nothing can separate us. Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance that's already between us, the distance of our sex, the differences of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world. Look how far away he is, asleep. Look how far away he is, he always is. But he comes back, he comes back, he comes back...."
"Some people are like thorns. But you have to let them be thorns, because thorns can't turn into petals. The trick is not letting them prick you; never let a thorn prick you!"
"Those who laugh with you when you laugh are acquaintances, those who cry with you when you cry are companions, and those who do both are friends."
"Behind you, leave your enemies. Beside you, keep your family. Around you, maintain your friends. Within you, cherish God."
"Sam laughed, a funny, self-deprecating laugh. "You did read a lot. And spent too much time just inside the kitchen window, where I couldn't see you very well.""And not enough time mostly naked in front of my bedroom window?" I teased. Sam turned bright red. "That," he said, "is so not the point of this conversation."
"Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship."
"I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life."
"Where are you?" he asked. "I'm right here" she said. "I know, but it feels like one percent of you is somewhere else, where is that one percent?" he said. "I don't know....I think I'm always like that..." she answered. "I like that." "You do?" "Yes, because that way, I have to always look for the one percent to find it."
Explore more quotes by Doris Lessing
"Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty."
"It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction."
"Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them."
"There was a certain struggling fury that went with being jobless, and persevering, and being turned down, that was different from simply being jobless."
"What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better."
"In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools."
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