138 Quotes by Lydia Davis

The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all.

I started writing the one-sentence stories when I was translating ‘Swann’s Way.’ There were two reasons. I had almost no time to do my own writing, but didn’t want to stop. And it was a reaction to Proust’s very long sentences.

That night I couldn’t sleep at all. Mozart had shown me immortal light, and I now felt as though I were under direct orders from Mozart. He expressed his sadness not only with the minor scale but with the major scale as well.

Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I’m going on. You need at least two brains to write.

She can’t say to herself that it is really over, even though anyone else would say it was over, since he has moved to another city, hasn’t been in touch with her in more than a year, and is married to another woman.

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 find teaching – I like it, but I find just walking into the classroom and facing the students very difficult.

I have never associated myself with such an unexpected part of the body as the thyroid.

So the question really is, Why doesn’t that pain make you say, I won’t do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you don’t.