Lydia Davis Quotes

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

I have a novel out, 'Lupus Rex,' that I wrote and am excited about that.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

I stopped writing short fiction early on - I was never really good at it, and I never liked the results. So I stopped trying to fit the material I was working with into these tidy little short fiction packages.

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me.

The short story, it's not a step on the way to becoming a novelist.

I'm a competent novelist. I'm getting better. But I'm a really good short story writer.

I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

The story and the characters of 'Girl Online' are mine.

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

If you haven't read 'In The Morning I'll Be Gone', I reckon it's a pretty good place to start if you're new to me and my books.

The thing I am attracted to is just good writing and stories that are based somewhat in reality.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

I write novels and other things.

When I write a novel, I want it to be completely different from a screenplay. I'm very conscious of the difference, and I want novels to work purely as novels. Otherwise I don't see how they'll survive - why don't we just all go to the movies or watch television.

Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.

I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature.

Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such brilliant control of the mechanics of the novel.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

Yes - 90% of fantasy is crap. And so is 90% of science fiction and 90% of mystery fiction and 90% of literary fiction.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.

I started writing because I wanted to write scripts, but I wasn't very good at it. Then I started writing short stories, sort of as treatments for the film scripts, and I found I enjoyed writing short stories far more than I enjoyed writing film scripts. Then the short stories got longer and longer and suddenly, I had novels.