Lydia Davis Quotes
I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, although I gathered them and took the occasional peek.
Quotes to Explore
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I actually found not having a routine was inspiration.
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The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated animals will be granted that right in law.
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Corporations are the new dictators.
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I'm a psychologist. I was a psychology faculty member, and then I became an administrator of the department, then the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. At the time of the presidential search, I was the dean.
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I've been blessed with pretty strong stamina and healthy genes, so I'd call myself sensible. I've had regular mammograms ever since I found a lump in my breast when I was 30. Thankfully, all was well.
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Though my poems are about evenly split between traditionally formal work that uses rhyme and meter and classical structure, and work that is freer, I feel that the music of language remains at the core of it all. Sound, rhythm, repetition, compression - these elements of my poetry are also elements of my prose.
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My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.
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I'm still very much a believer in the spontaneity of certain kinds of writing. But then you have to eventually, when you're writing a long play, make adjustments along the way - all kinds of adjustments.
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Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.
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As Peter Bogdanovich would say of Paper Moon: Ryan's wonderful in it, and he sat there and watched the kid steal the picture.
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You don't wear all your jewellery at once. You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice.
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There's such an extreme feeling to be in love, especially in quite an emotionally destructive relationship, where you're both kind of really bad for each other, but you love each other so much. Those extreme emotions, I think, can only be described with extreme imagery.
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We're seeing conservatives and evangelicals and libertarian and Reagan Democrats all coming together as one, and that terrifies Washington, D.C.
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There's a lot of whiners in every crowd.
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I think I went to Italy initially for the art, architecture, food and history, but I stayed there because of the people in Cortona.
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Where I am right now I'm pretty good at. You know, I understand that there's a problem. I'm addressing it. I'm doing the work that I have to do.
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Out of the 1.2 billion people in India, one-third of them are between the age of 1-14 and by 2030, India will have a dynamic and youthful workforce of about 700 million with an average age of 35. This is expected to constitute a substantial proportion of world's workforce.
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When we're trying to solve difficult national issues its sometimes necessary to talk to adversaries as well as friends. Historians have a word for this: diplomacy.
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We just weren't a family that gathered around the TV. I grew up in a town where everyone was outside all the time. I was mostly in Connecticut; I spent a lot of time in Tennessee in the summers, but I was in Stamford, Connecticut.
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When you get to be nearly 60, you do take stock. You don't know what's around the corner.
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What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.
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I can't really blame a lot of young sisters and brothers who believe that education has anything to offer them. Because as a matter of fact, it has nothing to offer them. Suppose they do get a high school diploma that is meaningful. What kind of job is awaiting them. The jobs that used to be available to working class people are not there as a result of the de-industrialization of this economy.
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I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, although I gathered them and took the occasional peek.
