Quote

I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!

Lydia Davis

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Lydia Davis
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 15
Linguist
Novelist
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Northampton
Massachusetts
Like
Seem
Fun
Words
Dream
Peas
Certain
Chick
Seems
Chicks
Better
French
Never
English

More quotes by Lydia Davis

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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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That's the interesting thing about writing. You can start late, you can be ignorant of things, and yet, if you work hard and pay attention you can do a good job of it.
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Because I'm not writing all the time (thank goodness), my mind is sometimes pleasantly blank.
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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.
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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 find teaching - I like it, but I find just walking into the classroom and facing the students very difficult.
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The moment when a limit is reached, when there is nothing ahead but darkness: something comes in to help that is not real. Another way all this is like madness: a mad person not helped out of his trouble by anything real begins to trust what is not real because it helps him and he needs it because real things continue not to help him.
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When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.
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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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I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.
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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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Do what you want to do, and don't worry if it's a little odd or doesn't fit the market.
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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.
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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.
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I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc.
Lydia Davis
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I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer deployment of idiom and vocabulary.
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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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As the writer, I may choose to ignore the emotional heart of the matter, and focus on details, and trust that the heart of the matter will be conveyed nevertheless.
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I don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.
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No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.
Lydia Davis