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I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.

Lydia Davis

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Lydia Davis
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 15
Linguist
Novelist
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Northampton
Massachusetts
Simply
Point
Character
Scenes
Narrative
Characters
Interested
Scene
Creating

More quotes by Lydia Davis

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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.
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I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc.
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I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.
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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.
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I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, and I don’t like to knock other writers as a matter of principle.
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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.
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I'm used to rereading e-mails, even, before sending them - a bit compulsive. So this is high speed roller coaster for me!
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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.
Lydia Davis
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I find teaching - I like it, but I find just walking into the classroom and facing the students very difficult.
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My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.
Lydia Davis
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Because I'm not writing all the time (thank goodness), my mind is sometimes pleasantly blank.
Lydia Davis
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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.
Lydia Davis
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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.
Lydia Davis
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Art is not in some far-off place.
Lydia Davis
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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.
Lydia Davis
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Do what you want to do, and don't worry if it's a little odd or doesn't fit the market.
Lydia Davis
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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.
Lydia Davis