"When was reviewing Doris Lessing's last two books from the Shikasta series, I found that she has discovered what I, to my great joy, had discovered a little earlier: that (a) if you're writing what they call science fiction, you're absolutely free-you can write anything you damn please, and (b) that if you take seriously the science fiction premise, you are furnished with an inexhaustable supply of absolutely beautiful and complex metaphors for our present situation, for who and where we are now, and I think it's not only women who have found this out. Angus Wilson was one of the first to do this with The Old Man in the Zoo years ago. That is a science fiction novel, if you look at it closely."

"Life can't be put on paper in all its complexity."

"Angus Wilson says in Wild Garden that most of his books begin with a visual image; one of them began when he saw these two people arguing and he had to find out what they were arguing about, who they were. That fits in beautifully with the kind of visual image that started The Left Hand of Darkness."

"People are able to live with only half a heart, to live without real compassion, because they are able to use words that are only forms."

"The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they’ve been at other times."

"All writers know aspects of life that they take very much for granted, that yet to their readers appear peculiar, special."

"In writing novels I have never been able to place much importance upon the distinction between real and imagined. A novelist, it seems to me, makes as much or as little use of the real world as he needs to project his vision of life."

"God knows how you Protestants can be expected to have any sense of direction," she said. "It's different with us, I haven't been to mass for years, I've got every mortal sin on my conscience, but I know when I'm doing wrong. I'm still a Catholic, it's there, nothing can take it away from me." "Of course, duckie," said Jeremy... "once a Catholic always a Catholic."

"[T]he impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life."

"The roots of art and play lie very close together."

"Life isn't just to be found, you have to work for it."

"Between Margaret's fine-edged art and Gladys's rough simplicity, where did the greater feminine solace lie? True art, after all, is simple."

"Matthew Lewis [was] the genre's first punk, the Johnny Rotten of the Gothic novel."

"Another Cleland see in Lewis rise. Why sleep the ministers of truth and law? Has the state no controul, no decent awe, While each with each in madd'ning orgies vie Pandars to lust and licens'd blasphemy? Can senates hear without a kindred rage? Oh may a poet's lightning blast the page, Nor with the bolt of Nemesis in vain Supply the laws, that wake not to restrain!"

"The worms, They crept in, and the worms, They crept out, And sported his eyes and his temples about, While the Spectre addressed Imogine."

"All hail, M. P.! from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train; At whose command "grim women" throng in crowds, And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds, With "small gray men," "wild yagers," and what not, To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott; Again all hail! if tales like thine may please, St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease; Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper hell."

"Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogine said, "Offensive to Love and to me! For if ye be living, or if ye be dead, I swear by the Virgin, that none in your stead Shall Husband of Imogine be."

"He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination; and so he wasted himself on ghost-stories and German romances."

"An Author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an Animal whom every body is privileged to attack; For though All are not able to write Books, all conceive themselves able to judge them."

"Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book, which young Women are recommended to study."

"A Warrior so bold, and a Virgin so bright Conversed, as They sat on the green: They gazed on each other with tender delight; Alonzo the Brave was the name of the Knight, The Maid's was the Fair Imogine."

"The most original novelist now writing in English."

"Hark! hark! – What mean those yells – those cries? His chain some furious madman breaks! He comes! I see his glaring eyes! Now! now! my dungeon bars he shakes. Help! Help! He's gone! Oh! fearful woe, Such screams to hear – such sights to see! My brain! my brain! – I know, I know I am not mad, but soon shall be."

"Un des plus grands romanciers que l'Angleterre ait jamais eus. ("One of the greatest novelists that England has ever had.")"

"Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth," said his cousin. "But we seem to have no other."

"Time has too much credit," said Bridget. "I never agree with the compliments paid to it. It is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary."

"As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots."

"Pushing forty? She's clinging on to it for dear life!"

"The only thing which can keep journalism alive—journalism, which is born of the moment, serves the moment, and, as a rule, dies with the moment—is—again, the Stevensonian secret!—charm."

"A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit."

"Well, of course, people are only human," said Dudley to his brother, as they walked to the house behind the women. "But it really does not seem much for them to be."

"Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down."

"But the mind travels far—and mysteriously—in sleep."

"But no man has a monopoly of conscience."

"Farewel, thou cruel world! – to morrow No more thy scorn my heart shall tear: – The grave will shield the child of sorrow, And heaven will hear the orphan's prayer."

"In the age of the concentration camp, when from 1935 to 1947 or so, she wrote her very best novels, no writer did more to illumine the springs of human cruelty, suffering and bravery."

"I wanted to show how a man of sensitive and noble character, born for religion, comes to throw off the orthodoxies of his day and moment, and go out into the wilderness where all is experiment, and spiritual life begins again."

"Customers must be delicately angled for at a safe distance—show yourself too much, and, like , they flashed away."

"[M]y credo is very short. Its first article is art—and its second is art—and its third is art!"

"We enjoy the great prophets of literature most when we have not yet lived enough to realise all they tell us."

"There is nothing more startling in human relations than the strong emotions of weak people."

"All things change,—creeds and philosophies and outward systems,—but God remains!"

"Truth has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system!"

"To reconceive the Christ! It is the special task of our age."

"[T]he better life cannot be imposed from without—it must grow from within."

"There is a tyrannical element in all fanaticism, an element which makes opposition a torment."

"Place before your eyes two precepts, and two only. One is, Preach the Gospel; and the other is—Put down enthusiasm! […] — the Church of England in a nutshell."

"Other trades may fail. The agitator is always sure of his market."

"This Laodicean cant of tolerance."