Believe Quote by 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 that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer…” quote by Lydia Davis — Download Open image

“I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer deployment of idiom and vocabulary.”

Lydia Davis

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Believe Characteristics Deployment Don't believe Ends Etc Heavy Idiom Lyrical Metaphor Style Supplies Use Vocabulary Writing

More by Lydia Davis

Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back,…

Lydia Davis

“But on that particular day I did not even begin to feel interested in this chore, and was suddenly more deeply bored than I have ever been before, and just turned around and went back inside. Which made me wonder why I wanted to do this chore at all, on other days, and also which was real: my slight interest…

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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…

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

Lydia Davis

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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

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

Lydia Davis

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

Lydia Davis

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“Everything was sharper, clearer, and closer, as though, before, I had been seeing only little bits at a time, not all of it, of all of it but veiled or clouded. What was blocking my view before? Was there a veil between me and the world, or did I have blinkers on that narrowed my vision and kept me looking…

Lydia Davis

“He did not know exactly when to thank his hostess after attending a dinner or a weekend party. In his uncertainty, he would thank her over and over again. It was as though he hoped to achieve through the effect of accumulation what one speech alone could not accomplish. Wassilly was puzzled by the fact that these social responses did…

Lydia Davis

“There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder. I did not lose track and kiss my own arm, or whatever came near my mouth. THe smallest motion did not immediately lead to another motion. It was not endless, I did not go more and more deeply…

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 her body next to you, and you don’t miss a thing, not a thing of what’s next to you, her arm, her leg, her shoulder, her face, that good skin, I have felt other good skin, but this…

Lydia Davis

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

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I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses - that's not the American dream. That's the booby prize, in the end. Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them - if, when you achieve them, you believe that this…

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