Top 28 Quotes by Lydia Davis

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

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

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.

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter.

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

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 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 see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators.

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.

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