Lydia Davis Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Art is not in some far-off place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I am basically the sort of person who has stage-fright teaching. I kind of creep into a classroom. I'm not an anecdote-teller, either, although I often wish I were.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

At a certain point in her life, she realises it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.

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

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

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

Once she was gone, every memory was suddenly precious, even the bad ones, even the times I was irritated with her, or she was irritated with me. Then it seemed a luxury to be irritated.

Sometimes the grief was nearby, waiting, just barely held back, and I could ignore it for a while. But at other times it was like a cup that was always full and kept spilling over.

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