Lydia Davis Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Pay

  Live chat, www.newyorker.com. December 10, 2009.

• 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

  Writing, Two, Brain

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

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

  Lydia Davis

  Jobs, Writing, Making Money

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

• The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all.

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, Style, Stories

  The New Yorker Live Chat, www.newyorker.com. December 10, 2009.

• I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to sink into one, the very quick form is appealing because of the pace of life.

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, People, Pace

  "Lydia Davis hints at move to microblogging fiction" by Vanessa Thorpe, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2013.

• That's the interesting thing about writing. You can start late, you can be ignorant of things, and yet, if you work hard and pay attention you can do a good job of it.

  Lydia Davis

  Jobs, Hard Work, Writing

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

• I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

  Lydia Davis

  Notebook, Writing, Stories

  "Lydia Davis hints at move to microblogging fiction" by Vanessa Thorpe, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2013.

• I worked more intensively hour after hour when I was starting out [writing]. More laboriously. I'd say quantity is important as well as quality, and if you're not producing enough, make a schedule and stick to it.

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, After Hours, Important

  "Live Chat with Lydia Davis". www.newyorker.com. December 16, 2009.

• 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

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

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, Thinking, Mixing

  "Live Chat with Lydia Davis". www.newyorker.com. December 16, 2009.

• 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

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

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, Mind, Sometimes

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

• If I was writing about an academic or a more difficult person, I would use the Latinate vocabulary more, but I do think Anglo-saxon is the language of emotion.

  Lydia Davis

  Writing, Thinking, Vocabulary

  "Lydia Davis hints at move to microblogging fiction" by Vanessa Thorpe, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2013.

• 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

• 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.

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