Lydia Davis Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don’t usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose I’m saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place.

  Lydia Davis

  Memories, Character, Ongoing

  "Lydia Davis: I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters". Interview with Sarah Manguso, www.believermag.com. January, 2008.

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• 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.

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• 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

  Lydia Davis (2008). “Break It Down: Stories”, p.30, Macmillan

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• 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

  Believe, Ideas, Enough

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• 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.

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

  Lydia Davis

  Character, Creating, Narrative

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

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

  Lydia Davis

  Teaching, Students, Classroom

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• I started with small-press publishers, who were willing to publish all sorts of forms. I didn't move to the larger presses until they knew what they were getting in for.

  Lydia Davis

  Moving, Form, Willing

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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

  Editing, Editors, Levels

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

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• In some sense the text and the translator are locked in struggle - 'I attacked that sentence, it resisted me, I attacked another, it eluded me' - a struggle in which, curiously, when the translator wins, the text wins too.

  Lydia Davis

  Struggle, Winning, Sentences

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• I often pose questions to myself and want the answers. The questions may be psychological or emotional. Or they may involve botany or [...] physiology. [...] I am very curious about strangers I observe - as in a bus line. I am very attached to finding out answers.

  Lydia Davis

  Emotional, Lines, May

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

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• 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.

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• I attempt all day, at work, not to think about what lies ahead, but this costs me so much effort that there is nothing left for my work. I handle telephone calls so badly that after a while the switchboard operator refuses to connect me. So I had better say to myself, Go ahead and polish the silverware beautifully, then lay it out ready on the sideboard and be done with it. Because I polish it in my mind all day long—this is what torments me (and doesn't clean the silver).

  Lydia Davis

  Lying, Thinking, Long

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• There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious - in the abstract, anyway.

  Lydia Davis

  Math, Principles, Abstract

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

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• Often, the idea that there can be a wide range of translations of one text doesn't occur to people - or that a translation could be bad, very bad, and unfaithful to the original.

  Lydia Davis

  Ideas, People, Unfaithful

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• No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.

  Lydia Davis

  Machines, Calling, May

  Lydia Davis (2007). “Varieties of Disturbance: Stories”, p.86, Macmillan

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• the translator, a lonely sort of acrobat, becomes confused in a labyrinth of paradox, or climbs a pyramid of dependent clauses and has to invent a way down from it in his own language.

  Lydia Davis

  Lonely, Confused, Pyramids

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• 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.

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• 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

  Rereading, Mail, Speed

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

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• 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.

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• To be simple, I would say a story has to have a bit of narrative, if only "she says," and then enough of a creation of a different time and place to transport the reader.

  Lydia Davis

  Simple, Narrative, Different

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Maybe the truth does not matter, but I want to know it if only so that I can come to some conclusions about such questions as: whether he is angry with me or not; if he is, then how angry; whether he still loves me or not; if he does, then how much; whether he loves me or not; how much; how capable he is of deceiving me in the act and after the act in the telling.

  Lydia Davis

  Breakup, Doe, Want

  Lydia Davis (2008). “Break It Down: Stories”, p.7, Macmillan

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