I was realizing something I should have known by using my intelligence, without ever having gone to their flat at all: that the ties between Nelson and his wife are bitterly close, and never to be broken in their lives. They are tied by the closest of all bonds, neurotic pain-giving; the experience of pain dealt and received; pain as an aspect of love; apprehended as a knowledge of what the world is, what growth is. Nelson is about to leave his wife; he will never leave her. She will wail at being rejected and abandoned; she does not know she will never be rejected. . Doris Lessing
About This Quote

In this quote by T.S. Eliot, he captures the bitter emotions of two people grieving over the loss of a loved one. When people die, the pain they feel can be so overwhelming that they will do anything to get rid of it and return to the world as if nothing happened. In this case, Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie did not receive much acceptance from their community and their government at the time because of the pain they felt over their loss.

When we lose someone we love, we try to seek out someone that will take their place in our life. As much as we like to think we can replace them with someone else, we cannot. The pain never goes away and only time can heal it.

Source: The Golden Notebook

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More Quotes By Doris Lessing
  1. Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
  2. There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.
  3. Listen Anna, if we don’t believe the things we put on our agendas will come true for us, then there’s no hope for us. We’re going to be saved by what we seriously put on our agendas.
  4. Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.
  5. I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
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