List of Lydia Davis Quotes

To Be Simple, I Would Say A Story Has To Have A Bit Of Narrative, If Only "she Says," And Then Enough Of A Creation Of A Different Time And Place To Transport The Reader.

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.

There Is Something Very Pleasing About The Principles Of Science And The Rules Of Math, Because They Are So Inevitable And So Harmonious - In The Abstract, Anyway.

If I Was Writing About An Academic Or A More Difficult Person, I Would Use The Latinate Vocabulary More, But I Do Think Anglo-saxon Is The Language Of Emotion.

No One Is Calling Me. I Can’t Check The Answering Machine Because I Have Been Here All This Time. If I Go Out, Someone May Call While I’m Out. Then I Can Check The Answering Machine When I Come Back In.

The Translator, A Lonely Sort Of Acrobat, Becomes Confused In A Labyrinth Of Paradox, Or Climbs A Pyramid Of Dependent Clauses And Has To Invent A Way Down From It In His Own Language.

Often, The Idea That There Can Be A Wide Range Of Translations Of One Text Doesn't Occur To People - Or That A Translation Could Be Bad, Very Bad, And Unfaithful To The Original.

I Don't Pare Down Much. I Write The Beginning Of A Story In A Notebook And It Comes Out Very Close To What It Will Be In The End. There Is Not Much Deliberateness About It.

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, And If You're Not Producing Enough, Make A Schedule And Stick To It.

I Think A Lot Of What Goes Into Writing Can Be Taught - Not Mixing Metaphors, Etc.

I Am Basically The Sort Of Person Who Has Stage-fright Teaching. I Kind Of Creep Into A Classroom. I'm Not An Anecdote-teller, Either, Although I Often Wish I Were.

When I'm Trying A New Form- Trying To Do Something I'm Not Used To Doing, Which Was True Of The Novel.