Quotes from 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.

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

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.

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

My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.

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.

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

I don't like to hurt people's feelings, and I don't like to knock other writers as a matter of principle.

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.

I follow my interests pretty - I don't like the word 'intuitively.' I follow them in a kind of natural way, without questioning them too much.

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.

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

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.

Because I'm not writing all the time (thank goodness), my mind is sometimes pleasantly blank.

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.

I see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators.

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.

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

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.

Do what you want to do, and don't worry if it's a little odd or doesn't fit the market.

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

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