Quotes from Lydia Davis

But at the time I had that strange confidence, born of watching a good movie, that I could be something different from what I was...

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant: that Scotland has so few trees.

There was no confusion of our bodies. I knew which arm was his and which mine, and which leg, and which shoulder. I did not lose track and kiss my own arm, or whatever came near my mouth. THe smallest motion did not immediately lead to another motion. It was not endless, I did not go more and more deeply into my body and his body as though to go as far as possible from my mind, and his mind, so conscious, so unrelenting. It did not end while it was still in the middle.

Then, although it was still the end of the story, I put it at the beginning of the novel, as if I needed to tell the end first in order to go on and tell the rest.

She can't say to herself that it is really over, even though anyone else would say it was over, since he has moved to another city, hasn't been in touch with her in more than a year, and is married to another woman.

Not a man of habits, though he wished to be

I attempt all day, at work, not to think about what lies ahead, but this costs me so much effort that there is nothing left for my work. I handle telephone calls so badly that after a while the switchboard operator refuses to connect me. So I had better say to myself, Go ahead and polish the silverware beautifully, then lay it out ready on the sideboard and be done with it. Because I polish it in my mind all day long—this is what torments me (and doesn't clean the silver).

But no matter how clearly I saw what I was doing, I would go on doing it, as though I simply allowed my shame to sit there alongside my need to do it, one separate from the other. I often chose to do the wrong thing and feel bad about it rather than to do the right thing, if the wrong thing was what I wanted.

At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.

I said I would write one letter every day after the mail came. But I did not do that for long. I did not answer most of the letters that came to me. I would plan to walk south in the early part of the afternoon, so as to get a little sun on my face. But I did not do that for long. Although I liked the idea of a rigid order, and seemed to believe that a thing would have more value if it was part of an order, I quickly became tired of the order.

They Take Turns Using a Word They Like "It's extraordinary," says one woman.

A woman has written yet another story that is not interesting, though it has a hurricane in it, and a hurricane usually promises to be interesting.

Looking back at that evening was almost better than experiencing it the first time, because it did not go faster than I could manage it, I did not have to worry about my part, and I was not distracted by doubt, because I knew how it would come out. I relived it so often, it might have happened just so that I could relive it later.

Maybe I had been alone in that apartment so much by then that I had retreated into some kind of inner, unsociable space that was hard to come out of. Maybe I felt I had disappeared and I was comfortable that way and did not want to be forced back into existence. I don't know.

As long as everything stayed the same, it seemed possible for him to come back. As long as everything was the way he had left it, his place was open for him. But if things changed beyond a certain point, his place in my life began to close, he could not reenter it, or if he did, he would have to enter in a new way.

Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean." Lydia Davis

I copied the address into my address book, erasing an earlier one that had not been good for very long. No address of his was good for very long and the paper in my address book where his address is written is thin and soft from being erased so often.

Is it that when these events are in chronological order they are not propelled forward by cause and effect, by need and satisfaction, they do not spring ahead with their own energy but are simply dragged forward by the passage of time?

This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my trip—I keep trying to read it. I have gone back to it so many times, each time dreading it and each time finding it no better than the last time, that by now it has become something of an old friend. My old friend the bad novel.

First they burned her - that was last month. Actually just two weeks ago. Now they're starvng him. When he's dead, they'll burn him too. Oh, how jolly. All this burning of family members in the summertime.

That night I couldn't sleep at all. Mozart had shown me immortal light, and I now felt as though I were under direct orders from Mozart. He expressed his sadness not only with the minor scale but with the major scale as well.

Maybe for now I should try, each day, to be a little less than I usually am.

I am happy doing the work I do, alone at a desk. That work is a great part of every day. But when I am old and alone all the time, will it be enough to think about the work I used to do?