Lydia Davis Quotes: top 55 famous quotes about Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Lydia Davis quotes, sayings and quotations 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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

Not a man of habits, though he wished to be, — Lydia Davis

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

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

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. — Lydia Davis

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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. — Lydia Davis

Art is not in some far-off place. — Lydia Davis

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

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

Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis

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

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

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. — Lydia Davis