Doris Lessing Quotes

I ain't no author, man... my writing skills are not of 'New York Times' best-seller quality, trust and believe it ain't. My vocabulary ain't.

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer.

There are probably many, many people who are better writers than me.

I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.

There's many times this year I've sat back and thought, I'm making a living from making things up. It's the only skill I have so I've been really lucky.

Good writers are of necessity rare.

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.

My brother used to say that I wrote faster than he could read. He wrote two books - of poems - better than all mine put together.

There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

One man is as good as another until he has written a book.

I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old could write that well. I was even punished because my teacher thought I'd lied about writing it! I had always loved to write, but it was then that I realized that I had a talent for it.

I shall be but a shrimp of an author.

I've figured out in the course of my life that the one thing I'm good at doing is writing books, and it would be crazy to trade that in for something else.

I've written a whole body of work that I'm incredibly proud of.

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others.

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

I'm here because of what I write. Obviously, I must know something.

I did pretty good for a guy who never finished high school and used to yodel at square dances.

I'm very lucky to be in projects that have such skilled writing in them.

I am not a writer, but I have been told I write good emails.