Doris Lessing Quotes

An African man should not do anything called housework or cooking.

I think, especially growing up in the South, we are taught that women are supposed to be soft, gentle and kind of just goes along with everything and is submissive.

Women all live a double standard.

We also ought to recognize that unpaid labor falls predominantly to women. The other thing I would do in countries like the U.S. is to show more men, even in TV ads, doing household work. Only two percent of ads show men doing chores, and yet we know they actually do several hours of it in real life. Those images affect young boys and girls.

Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?

[The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came as a great surprise. Instantly a lot of very ancient weapons were unleashed, the main ones, as usual, being on the theme of "She is unfeminine", "She is a man-hater".

French women will always look up at a man, even if he is four inches shorter than she is.

No man can understand why a woman shouldn't prefer a good reputation to a good time.

I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't think sex plays much part.

I am interested in writing how women really feel, how they really think, and how they respond to men. I don't want men reading my books because they might find out too much.

What works for a man, still does not work for a woman - both in terms of how they see themselves and how we see them.

I think feeling responsible for stuff that goes wrong is an inherent part of being female.

A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which - if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself - she generally paid the price.

We're comfortable with women in certain roles but not comfortable with women expressing anger or fully accepting their power. The most daring question a woman can ask is, 'What do I want?'

I think there are a lot of rules for women. We have a lot of expectations and a lot of rules for women. So we're expected to march in a straight line, and when we don't, all hell breaks loose.

In the end, I do think it's insulting to men and women to insist that they fit a certain profile. I never understood that.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Some people look gender non-conforming because they want to look that way - they don't want to conform to society's expectations.

No lady is ever a gentleman.

I'm often uncomfortable with girliness, to be honest.

I think a woman gets more if she acts feminine.

In our cultural history, all emotions have been more culturally acceptable to women.

The problem is, women have stopped setting the bar high.

Women are often expected to be more amiable or more pleasing or more submissive than men generally.

I think dancing is a man's game and if he does it well he does it better than a woman.