"About handling the difficult material, she comments: ‘Somehow there must occur the most..."

“About handling the difficult material, she comments: ‘Somehow there must occur the most imperceptible alteration of reality. A transformation, not a distortion of the truth. The story itself becomes the truth, not just for the writer but for the reader. In any good piece of writing it is not an identification with a situation, but this recognition of truth that is thrilling.’”

- Lydia Davis writing on Lucia Berlin  |  From “The Story Is the Thing: On Lucia Berlin” (via The New Yorker)