Lydia Davis quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Lydia Davis on Wise Famous Quotes.

I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.

If they finally move, is it because they are warm enough, or is it that they are stiff, or bored?

If you think of something, do it.
Plenty of people often think, I'd like to do this, or that.

Beyond the hand holding this book that I'm reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus - my extra hand.

I don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.

I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, although I gathered them and took the occasional peek.

I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.

The word "fine" is the greatest abbreviation and obviously wrong.

I see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators.

Collections aren't really planned. I just keep writing short pieces until I have enough for a collection.

I find teaching - I like it, but I find just walking into the classroom and facing the students very difficult.

I follow my interests pretty - I don't like the word 'intuitively.' I follow them in a kind of natural way, without questioning them too much.

The old vacuum cleaner keeps dying on her
over and over
until at last the cleaning woman
scares it by yelling:
"Motherfucker!

Because I'm not writing all the time (thank goodness), my mind is sometimes pleasantly blank.

I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.

Not a man of habits, though he wished to be,

They Take Turns Using a Word They Like "It's extraordinary," says one woman.

I first read 'Madame Bovary' in my teens or early twenties.

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter.

He says to us: They don't really do anything. Then he adds: But of course there is not a lot for them to do.

The people in your happy memories have to be the same people who want to have you in their own happy memories.

When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.

So the question really is, Why doesn't that pain make you say, I won't do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you don't.

They do sometimes protest...At these times, she sounds authoritative. But she has no authority.

My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.

I think the close work I do as a translator pays off in my writing - I'm always searching for multiple ways to say things.

I can talk for a long time only when it's about something boring.

I don't like to hurt people's feelings, and I don't like to knock other writers as a matter of principle.

I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing!

I'm used to rereading e-mails, even, before sending them - a bit compulsive. So this is high speed roller coaster for me!

Idea For A Short Documentary Film
Representatives of different food products manufacturers try to open their own packaging.

I am happy the leaves are growing large so quickly. Soon they will hide the neighbor and her screaming child.

For a moment it seemed incomprehensible to me that anyone would build a whole city when all that was needed was a room for her.

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant:that Scotland has so few trees.

She found it an interesting exercise to explore a place with a person she did not know well, following not only her own impulses but also his.

Art is not in some far-off place.

I always interrupt work with other work, either in a small way or big way, so that's normal.

Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become 'better organized.

Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean.

105 years old:
she wouldn't be alive today
even if she hadn't died.

I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!

A woman has written yet another story that is not interesting, though it has a hurricane in it, and a hurricane usually promises to be interesting.

I've gotten very alert not just to mixed metaphor but to any writing mistake.

She knows she is in Chicago. But she does not yet realize that she is in Illinois.

This was why she could not sleep. She could not say the day was over. She had no sense that any day was ever over.

Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you're trying to do. And be patient.

The Busy Road
I am so used to it by now
that when the traffic falls silent,
I think a storm is coming.

Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I'm going on. You need at least two brains to write.

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc.

because she couldn't write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn

But it is curious how you can see that an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it.

Of course we may have any number of translations of a given text - the more the better, really.

Do what you want to do, and don't worry if it's a little odd or doesn't fit the market.

The snow on their faces is so white that how the white patches on their faces, which once looked so white against their black, are a shade of yellow.