Lydia Davis Quotes

Storytelling, in print or speech, needs vital energy.

I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can.

I wrote my first short story in third grade.

I learnt to love reading. And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.

I like the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories. The reader has to participate very actively in the experience.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it's going to happen.

Technique is of less interest than character and story.

It's always the story that interests me.

How many times can you put together 26 different stories without running out?

I've just always been very interested in story above all.

I know what it's like to be genuinely intrigued and compelled by a story and to have a sense that there's an adventure to be had and a film to be conjured.

I always had an interest in telling stories.

To me, there's still nothing more thrilling than, every week, people getting to see another chapter in this story that you're telling.

Fiction needs writers and readers, and writers should cultivate both.

I've always been fascinated with storytelling.

If you're a fan of anything I do, I'm always telling a story. I'm into that - I like it when you don't know if it was true or not.

A lot of directors understand everything but the story.

I appreciate hearing different stories. It inspires me.

I tend to really enjoy being swept up in fiction. I love a good story and I admire fiction authors.

Plot is a literary convention. Story is a force of nature.

The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise.

Arithmetic is the death of story.

For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.