Doris Lessing

This is because the nature of this place is a strong emotion - "nostalgia" is their word for it - which means a longing for what has never been, or at least not in the form and shape imagined.

Listen Anna, if we don__ believe the things we put on our agendas will come true for us, then there__ no hope for us. We__e going to be saved by what we seriously put on our agendas.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

I don't think I really saw people except as appendages to my needs. It's only now, looking back, that I understand, but at the time I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.

It's a hard case,' said Paul. 'First, I'm twenty. That means I'm very nervous and ill-at-ease with women. Second, I'm twenty. I have all my life before me, and frankly the prospect often appals me. Thirdly, I'm twenty, and I'm in love with Anna and my heart is breaking.

The real reason why so many artists now take to politics, __ommitment_ and so on is that they are rushing into a discipline, any discipline at all, which will save them from the poison of the word __rtist_ used by the enemy. I remember very clearly the moments in which that novel was born. The pulse beat, violently; afterwards, when I knew I would write, I worked out what I would write. The __ubject_ was almost immaterial. Yet now what interests me is precisely this _ why did I not write an account of what had happened, instead of shaping a __tory_ which had nothing to do with the material that fuelled it. Of course, the straight, simple, formless account would not have been a __ovel_, and would not have got published, but I was genuinely not interested in __eing a writer_ or even in making money. I am not talking now of that game writers play with themselves when writing, the psychological game _ that written incident came from that real incident, that character was transposed from that one in life, this relationship was the psychological twin of that. I am simply asking myself: Why a story at all _ not that it was a bad story, or untrue, or that it debased anything. Why not, simply, the truth?

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.

Ella finds this story inside herself: A woman, loved by a man who criticizes her throughout their long relationship for being unfaithful to him and for longing for the social life which his jealousy bars her from and for being __ career woman_. This woman who, throughout the five years of their affair in fact never looks at another man, never goes out, and neglects her career becomes everything he has criticized her for being at that moment when he drops her. She becomes promiscuous, lives only for parties and is ruthless about her career, sacrificing her men and her friends for it. The point of the story is that this new personality has been created by him; and that everything she does _ sexual acts, acts of betrayal for the sake of her career, etc., are with the revengeful thought: There, that__ what you wanted, that__ what you wanted me to be. And, meeting this man again after an interval, when her new personality is firmly established, he falls in love with her again. This is what he always wanted her to be; and the reason why he left her was in fact because she was quiet, compliant and faithful. But now, when he falls in love with her again, she rejects him and in bitter contempt: what she is now is not what she __eally_ is. He has rejected her __eal_ self. He has betrayed a real love and now loves a counterfeit. When she rejects him, she is preserving her real self, whom he has betrayed and rejected.Ella does not write this story. She is afraid that writing it might make it come true.

We are all of us, to some degree or another, brainwashed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with foreign eyes.. the best we can hope for is that a kindly friend from another culture will enable us to look at our culture with dispassionate eyes.