Doris Lessing, an Original

Excerpt from the citation awarding the Nobel prize in literature to Doris Lessing

"that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny."

Lessing is a woman in continuous growth and startlingly originality, as evidenced by her reaction to the award.

Oh Christ. I couldn't care less. ... I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off.

and later

This has been going on for 30 years. I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush.

Ever since I read The Golden Notebook long ago, I've been interested in Doris Lessing, though I must confess it's been a very long time since I read any of her books.  So as I read and searched online, I've found more nuggets of this modest woman's growth and originality.

A communist who outgrew communism,

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.
The Sunday Times, London (10 May 1992)

"When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s," she recalls. "What I saw was, first of all, Hitler, he was going to live forever. Mussolini was in for 10,000 years. You had the Soviet Union, which was, by definition, going to last forever. There was the British empire _ nobody imagined it could come to an end. So why should one believe in any kind of permanence?"
Washington Post interview in 2006

A woman who outgrew feminism, her concerns today are more broadly human.

"The Women's Lib movement did nothing apart from shout slogans," said Lessing, who went on to say that women have much more reason to be grateful to the inventors of the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner and the pill, than to the "sisters".  Bringing about change, she said, is "hard bloody work" and requires more slogging than sloganeering.
Eamonn Fitzgerald in Doris Lessing has 151 friends

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, 'Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.' Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion.
– Doris Lessing, The New York Times, 25 July 1982

"The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests," said Mrs Lessing, at the Edinburgh Book Festival. "Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."
Telegraph interview in 2001

Her thoughts on aging

All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.
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For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.
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I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become.
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“What matters most is that we learn from living”
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The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all.
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Somewhere about middle age, it occurs to most people that a century is only their own lifetime twice. On that thought, all of history rushes together, and now they live inside the story of time, instead of looking at it from outside, as observers. Only ten or twelve of their lifetimes ago, Shakespeare was alive. The French Revolution was just the other day.