Lydia Davis Quotes

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.

You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

People always ask, 'How do you write so many books?' And I say, I work a lot. I work six or seven days a week.

I make time to write.

I am always trying to write.

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.

I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all.

I am a highly disciplined person. I get up at seven every morning and, still in my pajamas, sit down at my desk where my checkered ring binders and my fountain pen are ready for use. I try to write two pages every day.

If you don't put out a shirt for eight months, that doesn't mean it took you eight months to make the shirt.

I am not at all in favor of hard work for its own sake; many people who work very hard indeed produce terrible things, and should most certainly not be encouraged.

If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.

If I have to write on an airplane or get up early to write or write late, you just gotta sit down. When you have the time, you have to be able to do it.

Write as well as you can and finish what you start.

I write every day for most of the work day, and I try to write 2,500 words per day... If I don't make it a routine and treat it like a job, I'd never get anything done.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

If you write a half hour a day it makes a lot of writing year by year.

As much as I've produced it looks to people like I must have written quickly, but it isn't that - because I put in in a sixty- or seventy-hour week.

I'm a workmanlike writer. I show up every day and treat it like a job. The old rule that writing is like any other job, the first rule is that you must show up. I'm at the keyboard from 9 to 4 every day.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.