News at Eleven: [Doris Lessing] had to sit for a moment

on the steps of her home to digest the news. But she took it with characteristic aplomb. "This has been going on for 30 years. I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush."

Later, during an interview on Radio 4's "The World at One" program, she commented on her career and the Nobel Prize: "They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead, so I guess they were thinking they'd better give it to me now before I popped off. This is the way I'm thinking."

from Los Angeles Times: Nobel goes to Doris Lessing

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