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:
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
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
Lydia Davis
Photo:
kellywritershouse,
CC BY 2.0
Occupation: American Writer
Born: July 15, 1947
Quotes count: 49
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