Editing Quote 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…

— 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…

— 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 adapt to…

— 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 as quality,…

— 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 it, 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 would thank…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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,…

— Lydia Davis