Quotes from Lydia Davis

in every election their votes cancel each other, and they are as no one.

I had never before thought so clearly about all the scenes that took place when I wasn't there to witness them. And then, I had a stranger and less pleasant thought: not only was I not necessary to those scenes, and not necessary to those lives that continued to go on without me, but in fact, I was not necessary at all. I didn't have to exist.

Color these fish. Cut them out. Punch a hole in the top of each fish. Put a ribbon through all the holes. Tie these fish together. Now read what is written on these fish: Jesus is a friend. Jesus gathers friends. I am a friend of Jesus.

Yet my confusion must be this: though her body is old, her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh.

If your eyeballs move, this means that you're thinking, or about to start thinking. If you don't want to be thinking at this particular moment, try to keep your eyeballs still.

When there were two of you, you decided so many little things together, such as which room to sit in with your morning coffee. When you were alone, he said, it was so miserably difficult to make those little choices.

But I think her feelings about our mother were a heavy burden in her life, at least when they were together. When our mother was far away, maybe she could forget her. Our mother was always stepping on her to get up higher, always needing to be right, always needing to be better than her, and than all of us, most of the time. The terrible innocence of our mother, too, as she did that. She had no idea, most of the time.

But in the case of the novel by Perec, who has no fewer than four e's in his own name, the deliberate elimination of the e was perhaps not just a conceptual antic but had an emotional source and an emotional effect.

How can she eat this fish, cooling on a slab of marble? And yet the fish, too, motionless as it is, and dismantled from its bones, and fleeced of its silver skin, has never been so completely alone as it is now: violated in a final manner and regarded with a weary eye by this woman who has made the latest mistake of her day and done this to it.

Cat, gray tabby, calm, watches large, black ant. Man, rapt, stands staring at cat and ant. Ant advances along path. Ant halts, baffled. Ant back-tracks fast—straight at cat. Cat, alarmed, backs away. Man, standing, staring, laughs. Ant changes path again. Cat, calm again, watches again.

And so we turn off the telephone during this program and do not answer the knock at the door that rarely comes.

He had a certain almost obsequious charm. He liked talking about himself, and did not ask many questions of her. She noticed the imbalance but did not mind.

If you want to be original, don't labor to be original. Rather, work on yourself, your mind, and then say what you think. This was Stendhal's advice. Actually, he said: "If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.

The article ends, however, with a cautionary emendation of the opening statement about affection: nowadays many people make love, it says, who do not love each other, or even have any affection for each other, and whether or not this is a good thing we do not yet know.

Free yourself of your device, for at least certain hours of the day—or at the very least one hour. Learn to be alone, all alone, without people and without a device that is turned on. Learn to experience the purity of that kind of concentration. Develop focus, learn to focus intently on one thing, uninterrupted, for a long time.

IDÉE POUR UN COURT DOCUMENTAIRE Des représentants de l'industrie alimentaire essayent d'ouvrir leurs emballages.

Neither one has ever been awkward, clumsy, or hasty. They know the importance of not rushing.

Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back, says heart. Head is all heart has. Help, head. Help heart.

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.

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

Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become 'better organized.

I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.

Art is not in some far-off place.

I can talk for a long time only when it's about something boring.