138 Quotes by Lydia Davis

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

But at the time I had that strange confidence, born of watching a good movie, that I could be something different from what I was...

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 think that a certain hunger for him came first and was followed by a feeling of tenderness, gradually increasing, for a person who aroused such hunger and then satisfied it. Maybe that was what I felt for him that I thought was love.

Then, although it was still the end of the story, I put it at the beginning of the novel, as if I needed to tell the end first in order to go on and tell the rest.

I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to sink into one, the very quick form is appealing because of the pace of life.

I am happy doing the work I do, alone at a desk. That work is a great part of every day. But when I am old and alone all the time, will it be enough to think about the work I used to do?

People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?