Lydia Davis quotes

Lydia Davis is an American writer acclaimed for her extremely short stories and innovative literary style. Her works blur the boundaries between poetry, fiction, and essay. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Man Booker International Prize. Here are 49 of her quotes:

Art is not in some far-off place.

Lydia Davis

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

Lydia Davis

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

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

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

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

Lydia Davis

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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