Doris Lessing Quotes

Marriage, in life, is like a duel in the midst of a battle.

In war time you will do almost anything. You just have to.

Marriage is a gamble, let's be honest.

With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.

Those first few years of marriage, before the war interrupted all our lives, Phil and I had a very happy time. I grew up considerably, mostly thanks to him.

In war, it feels like everything you're doing is more important because you're in the proximity of violence and death, and that proximity changes your relationship to America because it changes the way you see the world.

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope.

We came to know each other in war, and in war we continue.

You must come into the war if you are to survive.

Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages. Nations had risen against nations, employing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other. Wheel within wheel, the vast machine was instinct with the restless spirit of desolation.

War was a time when personal desires were of necessity subjugated to a singleness of purpose …

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

All marriages, all relationships have huge ups and downs.

These guys that were standing up to fight, for the most part, had pride in their country, and they wanted to do the best, and they wanted to go out and fight, and I was as close to these Afghans as I was to the Marines.

Once you share a ring with someone, go to war with someone... you have a different type of respect for someone.

I found it an interesting portrait of a marriage in exploring notions of how one partner supports the other, whilst not jeopardizing the greater good - which is the family.

The war, as I felt it and a lot of my compatriots felt it, was a creative act.

War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war.

I think it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill.

Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.

In war, you win or lose, live or die - and the difference is just an eyelash.

When you go to war, it's important for everybody to know that they're going to come home in one way or other.

As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war.

Love and marriage are wonderful arenas in which to place a character. We are most likely to risk our morals and beliefs while in love. Betrayal gives tremendous insights into a character as well.

For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.