No one is calling me. I canโt check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while Iโm out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.
Lydia DavisYou know the pain is part of the whole thing. And it isnโt that you can say afterwards the pleasure was greater than the pain and thatโs why you would do it again. That has nothing to do with it. You canโt measure it, because the pain comes after and it lasts longer. So the question really is, Why doesnโt that pain make you say, I wonโt do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you donโt.
Lydia DavisBut it is curious how you can see that an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it.
Lydia Davisthe translator, a lonely sort of acrobat, becomes confused in a labyrinth of paradox, or climbs a pyramid of dependent clauses and has to invent a way down from it in his own language.
Lydia Davis