If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I worked more intensively hour after hour when I was starting out [writing]. More laboriously. I'd say quantity is important as well… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing! — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I'm going on. You need at least two brains… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
As the writer, I may choose to ignore the emotional heart of the matter, and focus on details, and trust that the… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
If I was writing about an academic or a more difficult person, I would use the Latinate vocabulary more, but I do… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
Because I'm not writing all the time (thank goodness), my mind is sometimes pleasantly blank. — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
Collections aren't really planned. I just keep writing short pieces until I have enough for a collection. — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating,… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“She begins to write to Pierre, a sort of laboratory notebook of grief.” — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
To observe the world carefully, to write a lot and often, on a schedule if necessary, to use the dictionary a lot,… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I've gotten very alert not just to mixed metaphor but to any writing mistake. — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I started writing the one-sentence stories when I was translating 'Swann's Way.' There were two reasons. I had almost no time to… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc. — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I think the close work I do as a translator pays off in my writing - I'm always searching for multiple ways… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
That's the interesting thing about writing. You can start late, you can be ignorant of things, and yet, if you work hard… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her;… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“But on that particular day I did not even begin to feel interested in this chore, and was suddenly more deeply bored than I… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I always interrupt work with other work, either in a small way or big way, so that's normal. — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
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,… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
I don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting. — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“because she couldn’t write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn” — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“Everything was sharper, clearer, and closer, as though, before, I had been seeing only little bits at a time, not all of it, of… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“He did not know exactly when to thank his hostess after attending a dinner or a weekend party. In his uncertainty, he would thank… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder. I did… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“So it’s not really $100 a shot because it goes on all day, from the start when you wake up and feel her body… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
“The people of the town, though, remained strangers: I could not realize that I must be seeing some of them over and over again,… — Lydia Davis Copy Share Image
