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

— Lydia Davis

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 became more difficult. I placed constraints on myself, and filled the hours with the day. Or perhaps it was even more complicated than that. Sometimes I did exactly what I wanted to do all day—I lay on the sofa and read a book, or I typed up an old diary—and then the most terrifying sort of despair would descend on me: the very freedom I was enjoying seemed to say that what I did in my day was arbitrary, and that therefore my whole life and how I spent it was arbitrary.

— Lydia Davis

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 that vain consumption--vain because it is endless--and begin to reread those books that had given me the intensest pleasure in my past.

— Lydia Davis

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.

— Lydia Davis

It is the lowered head that makes her seem less noble than, say, a horse, or a deer surprised in the woods. More exactly, it is her lowered head and neck. As she stands still, the top of her head is level with her back, or even a little lower, and so she seems to be hanging her head in discouragement, embarrassment, or shame. There is at least a suggestion of humility and dullness about her. But all these suggestions are false.

— Lydia Davis

Just as it is hard for us, in our garden, to stop weeding, because there is always another weed there in front of us, it may be hard for her to stop grazing, because there are always a few more shoots of fresh grass just ahead of her.

— Lydia Davis

No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.

— Lydia Davis

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.

— Lydia Davis

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, in turn, is the leader. And so in this way, taking courage from one another, they advance, as a group, towards the strange thing in front of them.

— Lydia Davis

She is bending over her child. She can’t leave her. The child is laid out in state on a table. She wants to take one more photograph of the child, probably the last. In life, the child would never sit still for a photograph. She says to herself, “I’m going to get the camera,” as if saying to the child, “Don’t move.

— Lydia Davis