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.
Lydia DavisWhen I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.
Lydia DavisI am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.
Lydia DavisI find teaching - I like it, but I find just walking into the classroom and facing the students very difficult.
Lydia DavisNearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet.
Lydia Davis