Quotes by Lydia Davis

“...as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth mea...”

“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 summ...”

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

“One gains courage from the one in front of her and moves forward a few steps, passing her by just a little. Now the one farthest back gains courage from the one in front and moves forward until she...”

“I looked at whale jawbones in the museum this morning. Then I did some shopping. Whenever I go into the drugstore it seems that many people are buying condoms and motion sickness medicine.”

“If you think of something, do it.Plenty of people often think, Id like to do this, or that.”

“What was happening to them was that every bad time produced a bad feeling that in turn produced several more bad times and several more bad feelings, so that their life together became crowded with...”

“Art is not in some far-off place.”

“At a certain point in her life, she realises 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 had reached a juncture in my reading life that is familiar to those who have been there: in the allotted time left to me on earth, should I read more and more new books, or should I cease with th...”

“Once she was gone, every memory was suddenly precious, even the bad ones, even the times I was irritated with her, or she was irritated with me. Then it seemed a luxury to be irritated.”

“I had had a feeling of freedom because of the sudden change in my life. By comparison to what had come before, I felt immensely free. But then, once I became used to that freedom, even small tasks ...”

“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 ...”

“Sometimes the grief was nearby, waiting, just barely held back, and I could ignore it for a while. But at other times it was like a cup that was always full and kept spilling over.”

“That fall, after the summer when they both died, she and my father, there was a point when I wanted to say to them, All right, you have died, I know that, and you've been dead for a while, we have ...”

“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 i...”

“This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my tripI 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 ti...”

“No one is calling me. I cant check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while Im out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.”

“If they finally move, is it because they are warm enough, or is it that they are stiff, or bored?”

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