Quotes by Lydia Davis

About Lydia Davis:

Lydia Davis is an American writer noted for her short stories. Davis is also a novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, and has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Proust's Swann’s Way and Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Lydia Davis

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.

Lydia Davis

Collections aren't really planned. I just keep writing short pieces until I have enough for a collection.

Lydia Davis

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

Lydia Davis

I first read 'Madame Bovary' in my teens or early twenties.

Lydia Davis

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story.

Lydia Davis

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

Lydia Davis

Even though I believe a superlative translation can achieve timelessness, that doesn't mean I think other translators shouldn't attempt other versions. The more the better, in the end.

Lydia Davis

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter.

Lydia Davis

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

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

If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.

Lydia Davis

We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don’t usually serve us up whole scenes...

Lydia Davis

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

Lydia Davis

The existence of another, competing translation is a good thing, in general, and only immediately discouraging to one person - the translator who, after one, two, or three years of more or less careful work, sees another, and perhaps superior, versio...

Lydia Davis

I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.

Lydia Davis

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to sink into one, the very quick form is appealing because of the pace of life.

Lydia Davis

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.

Lydia Davis

I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing!

Lydia Davis

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.

Lydia Davis

I think the close work I do as a translator pays off in my writing - I'm always searching for multiple ways to say things.

Lydia Davis

Author Bio

  • NameLydia Davis
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornJuly 15, 1947
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionLinguist; Translator; Writer
  • AwardsMan Booker International Prize; Guggenheim Fellowship; MacArthur Fellows Program