Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook was published on this day, 16 April, in 1962. To mark this anniversary, here are ten of the best quotes from this landmark novel, and from the wise and wonderful Lessing in general.
Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you’ve written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then I won’t have to write it. – The Golden Notebook
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. – The Golden Notebook
There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best. – The Golden Notebook
The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. – The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook for some reason surprised people but it was no more than you would hear women say in their kitchens every day in any country. […] I was really astounded that some people were shocked. – quoted by BBC World Service
Parents should leave books lying around marked ‘forbidden’ if they want their children to read. – The Times interview, 2003
You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. I don’t know much about creative writing programs. But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. – New York Times interview, 1984
It’s heart-breaking how often I have to say when I’m giving talks, ‘This book is out of print. This book is out of print.’ It’s a roll call of dead books. – Salon interview, 1997
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way. – The Four-Gated City, 1969
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. – The Times interview, 2003