To do without something one wants

It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing – I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the 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.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (Flamingo Modern Classic, 2002) p. 242

Literature is analysis after the event

Literature is analysis after the event.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (Flamingo Modern Classic, 2002) p.210

The choice between arts and sciences

As in the political sphere, the child is taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free mind, lives in a free country, makes his own decisions. At the same time he is a prisoner of the assumptions and dogmas of his time, which he does not question, because he has never been told they exist. By the time a young person has reached the age when he has to choose [...] between the arts and the sciences, he often chooses the arts because he feels that here is humanity, freedom, choice. He does not know that he is already moulded by a system: he does not know that the choice itself is the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (Flamingo Modern Classic, 2002) p. 15