Lydia Davis Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Lydia Davis

  Worry, Want, Littles

  53 Copy quote

• Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet.

  Lydia Davis

  Running, Morning, Taken

  17 Copy quote

• Art is not in some far-off place.

  Lydia Davis

  Art, Art Is, Writer's Block

  Lydia Davis (2008). “Break It Down: Stories”, p.59, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• The moment when a limit is reached, when there is nothing ahead but darkness: something comes in to help that is not real. Another way all this is like madness: a mad person not helped out of his trouble by anything real begins to trust what is not real because it helps him and he needs it because real things continue not to help him.

  Lydia Davis

  Real, Mad, Darkness

  Lydia Davis (2008). “Break It Down: Stories”, p.15, Macmillan

  15 Copy quote

• You know the pain is part of the whole thing. And it isn’t that you can say afterwards the pleasure was greater than the pain and that’s why you would do it again. That has nothing to do with it. You can’t measure it, because the pain comes after and it lasts longer. 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

  Pain, Lasts, Pleasure

  Lydia Davis (2008). “Break It Down: Stories”, p.29, Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

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

  Lydia Davis

  Storm, One Day, May

  Lydia Davis (2007). “Varieties of Disturbance: Stories”, p.19, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Answers, Sometimes, Asks

  Lydia Davis (2014). “Almost No Memory: Stories”, p.4, Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

• I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.

  Lydia Davis

  Dream, Distance, Glasses

  5 Copy quote

• Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back, says heart. Head is all heart has. Help, head. Help heart.

  Lydia Davis

  Heart, Feel Better, Long

  Lydia Davis (2007). “Varieties of Disturbance: Stories”, p.191, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  9 Copy quote

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

  Lydia Davis

  Thinking, People, Terror

  Lydia Davis (2008). “Break It Down: Stories”, p.57, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Dream, Fun, English Words

  Our Live Chat with Lydia Davis, www.newyorker.com. December 10, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.

  Lydia Davis

  Giving Up, Selfish, Choices

  8 Copy quote

• As the writer, I may choose to ignore the emotional heart of the matter, and focus on details, and trust that the heart of the matter will be conveyed nevertheless.

  Lydia Davis

  Heart, Emotional, Focus

  Interview with Sarah Manguso, www.believermag.com. January, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Hard Work, Trying, Example

  The New Yorker Live Chat, www.newyorker.com. December 16, 2009.

  8 Copy quote

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

  Lydia Davis

  Scotland, Tree, Indignant

  Lydia Davis (2002). “Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: Stories”, p.44, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words that are his own and not his own, writing a work not original to him, composing with utmost pains and without recognition of his pains or the fact that the composition really is his own.

  Lydia Davis

  Pain, Writing, Creating

  7 Copy quote

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

  Lydia Davis

  Long, Boring, Long Time

  5 Copy quote

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

  Lydia Davis

  Meditation, Stories, Littles

  9 Copy quote

• We feel an affinity with a certain thinker because we agree with him; or because he shows us what we were already thinking; or because he shows us in a more articulate form what we were already thinking; or because he shows us what we were on the point of thinking; or what we would sooner or later have thought; or what we would have thought much later if we hadn’t read it now; or what we would have been likely to think but never would have thought if we hadn’t read it now; or what we would have liked to think but never would have thought if we hadn’t read it now.

  Lydia Davis

  Thinking, Affinity, Form

  Lydia Davis (2014). “Almost No Memory: Stories”, p.192, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  5 Copy quote

• After Birth is a fast-talking, opinionated, moody, funny, and slightly desperate account of the attempt to recover from having a baby. It is a romp through dangerous waters, in which passages of hilarity are shadowed by the dark nights of earliest motherhood, those months so tremulous with both new love and the despairing loss of one's identity-to read it is an absorbing, entertaining, and thought-provoking experience.

  Lydia Davis

  Baby, Loss, Dark

  9 Copy quote

• To observe the world carefully, to write a lot and often, on a schedule if necessary, to use the dictionary a lot, to look up word origins, to analyze closely the work of writers you admire, to read not only contemporaries but writers of the past, to learn at least one foreign language, to live an interesting life outside of writing.

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, Past, Interesting

  7 Copy quote

• I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.

  Lydia Davis

  Believe, Writing, May

  Interview with Sarah Manguso, www.believermag.com. January, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

• I started writing the one-sentence stories when I was translating 'Swann's Way.' There were two reasons. I had almost no time to do my own writing, but didn't want to stop. And it was a reaction to Proust's very long sentences.

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, Two, Long

  6 Copy quote

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

  Lydia Davis

  Struggle, Reader, Allegory

  The Transcript of Our Live Chat with Lydia Davis, www.newyorker.com. December 16, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Hurt, People, Feelings

  "Long Story Short" by Dana Goodyear, www.newyorker.com. March 17, 2014.

  5 Copy quote

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