Lydia Davis

Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They…

— Lydia Davis

“But on that particular day I did not even begin to feel interested in this chore, and was suddenly more deeply bored…

— Lydia Davis

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

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

— Lydia Davis

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

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

— Lydia Davis

“because she couldn’t write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn”

— Lydia Davis

“Everything was sharper, clearer, and closer, as though, before, I had been seeing only little bits at a time, not all of…

— Lydia Davis

“He did not know exactly when to thank his hostess after attending a dinner or a weekend party. In his uncertainty, he…

— Lydia Davis

“There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder.…

— Lydia Davis

“So it’s not really $100 a shot because it goes on all day, from the start when you wake up and feel…

— Lydia Davis

“The people of the town, though, remained strangers: I could not realize that I must be seeing some of them over and…

— Lydia Davis

“He does not trust her: she will claim to be in a bad mood when she is not, and then require him…

— Lydia Davis

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

— Lydia Davis

the translator, a lonely sort of acrobat, becomes confused in a labyrinth of paradox, or climbs a pyramid of dependent clauses and…

— Lydia Davis

No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go…

— Lydia Davis

I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level…

— Lydia Davis

“The first New Year after they died felt like another betrayal -- we were leaving behind the last year in which they…

— Lydia Davis

“Here is a very handsome English traffic engineer. The fact that he is so handsome, and so animated, and has such a…

— Lydia Davis

“But at other times, I sit here reading in the afternoon, a myrtle in my buttonhole, and there are such beautiful passages…

— Lydia Davis

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

“But near the end of the hour I was also telling him how face-to-face with another person I couldn't speak. There was…

— Lydia Davis

I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End…

— Lydia Davis

“He had a certain almost obsequious charm. He liked talking about himself, and did not ask many questions of her. She noticed…

— Lydia Davis

“The Outing An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods,…

— Lydia Davis