138 Quotes by Lydia Davis

This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my trip—I keep trying to read it. I have gone back to it so many times, each time dreading it and each time finding it no better than the last time, that by now it has become something of an old friend. My old friend the bad novel.

I looked at whale jawbones in the museum this morning. Then I did some shopping. Whenever I go into the drugstore it seems that many people are buying condoms and motion sickness medicine.

There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.

And, everyone knows, to tolerate a person telling you about his childhood it is necessary to be in love with him.

She eats her potatoes as though she would make a revolution among them, as though they were the People.

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.

All my life I have been trying to improve my German.At last my German is better—but now I am old and ill and don’t have long to live.Soon I will be dead,with better German.

One gains courage from the one in front of her and moves forward a few steps, passing her by just a little. Now the one farthest back gains courage from the one in front and moves forward until she, in turn, is the leader. And so in this way, taking courage from one another, they advance, as a group, towards the strange thing in front of them.