Lydia Davis Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, although I gathered them and took the occasional peek.”

“I've gotten very alert not just to mixed metaphor but to any writing mistake.”

“Of course we may have any number of translations of a given text - the more the better, really.”

“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.”

“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.”

“All of the little entries in 'The Cows' were written in an irregular way. There might be one or two done one day, and then two weeks might go by or four weeks, and then they were put in an order or sequence.”

“I think I have a sense right in the beginning of how big an idea it is and how much room it needs, and, almost more importantly, how long it would sustain anybody's interest.”

“Ordering is difficult. It's like arranging pieces of music in a concert: What do you put first? What do you put after the intermission? I want the reader to be sort of surprised, to come to each story freshly.”