Doris Lessing Quotes

I'm very interested in dysfunction. I kind of realized in my first film that a character with so much rage that she didn't know where to put it was both heartbreaking and interesting to me.

I don't do well around the angry, bitter and emotionally fragile among us, which may eliminate 70% of the population.

Love came in wounded and frantic ways to my dismaying family.

Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy years, till their kids were grown, and this was a catastrophe for us.

I wouldn't say I was grumpy. It's more pathological - I have seismic tantrums. I get red in the face and cry at least three times a week, and I have to lie down and have a nap afterwards.

An angry father is most cruel towards himself.

My mom obviously had a problem.

There's definitely an intense anger that I have inside, and I don't know where it came from. I've had it all my life. My mom was always like, 'You're going to end up in jail with that temper!'

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running.

I come from a very dysfunctional family, so I was comfortable in misery. So I would create more misery for myself because I didn't know anything else.

My family's messed up, for real.

Violence was very much a part of my mother's upbringing - a little less so with my father's, but my father was an angry man when he was young. He was angry and frustrated and had no idea how to channel anger.

I have a violence in me that is hot as death-blood.

I had lots of hurt and lots of pain, lots of woundedness, bruises, broken heartedness in my life. I was abused sexually by my father, abused mentally, emotionally. My mom didn't know what to do about it, and she was being hurt in the process. So she just didn't deal with it. And I can guarantee you, just because you don't deal with something, that doesn't make it go away.

Anger can be an expensive luxury.

My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't evil or anything, but he was worthless.

Getting mad only leads to madness.

I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now. You have to go through this to understand.

Families just have so many secrets and dysfunctions.

My mother always thought if her mother hadn't left her, she would have been happy. All the problems she had never would have happened.

Seeing your parents fall apart is really rough. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

People don't set out being bad. They have deep pain inside.

I have this want-to-be-liked thing, but deep down, I had this rage. I was just - I was blinded. I wasn't healthy enough to be able to learn more. I had one mode - to fight.

My father died in 1957, just before I was born. My mother went to her Jewish aunt, who slammed the door in her face.

I may have punched walls when no one else was around.