Doris Lessing (1919-2013)

Doris Lessing, British novelist, dies at 94. My take away from her words cited in The Los Angeles Times:

Humanity, male and female, is driven by a common yearning:

Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who would really understand me, who'd be kind to me.That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.

On the failure to retain reading as an integral part of our culture:

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing. . . .

How are we, our minds, going to change with the new Internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities, so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging?

Ouch! And, on ageing:

Of course we don't change character at all. But our capabilities — I can tell you that losing energy is the worst thing there is, and that's what happens when you're aging.... And that's why I tell everybody, for God's sake, make use of your energy while you have it. Because it's going to go down a black hole.

Aye! Aye! That's the fear!