Varieties of Disturbance Quotes

“Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“What was happening to them was that every bad time produced a bad feeling that in turn produced several more bad times and several more bad feelings, so that their life together became crowded with bad times and bad feelings, so crowded that almost nothing else could grow in that dark field. But then she had a feeling of peace one morning that lingered from the evening before spent sewing while he sat reading in the next room. And a day or two later, she had a feeling of contentment that lingered in the morning from the evening before when he kept her company in the kitchen while she washed the dinner dishes. If the good times increased, she thought, each good time might produce a good feeling that would in turn produce several more good times that would produce several more good feelings. What she meant was that the good times might multiply perhaps as rapidly as the square of the square, or perhaps more rapidly, like mice, or like mushrooms springing up overnight from the scattered spore of a parent mushroom which in turn had sprung up overnight with a crowd of others from the scattered spore of a parent, until her life with him with be so crowded with good times that the good times might crowd out the bad as the bad times had by now almost crowded out the good. ”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“But at other times, I sit here reading in the afternoon, a myrtle in my buttonhole, and there are such beautiful passages in the book that I think I have become beautiful myself.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“Idea For A Short Documentary Film

Representatives of different food products manufacturers try to open their own packaging.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“She found it an interesting exercise to explore a place with a person she did not know well, following not only her own impulses but also his.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“I looked at whale jawbones in the museum this morning. Then I did some shopping. Whenever I go into the drugstore it seems that many people are buying condoms and motion sickness medicine.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“First they burned her - that was last month. Actually just two weeks ago. Now they're starvng him. When he's dead, they'll burn him too.
Oh, how jolly. All this burning of family members in the summertime.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“It is not what you want to be doing. It is that you are passing the time. You are waiting until it is a certain hour and you are in a certain condition so that you can go to sleep.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance: Stories

“Before I knew my dear Milena, I thought life itself was unbearable. Then she came into my life and showed me that that was not so. True, our first meeting was not auspicious, for her mother answered the door, and what a strong forehead the woman had, with an inscription on it which read: "I am dead, and I despise anyone who is not." Milena seemed pleased that I had come, but much more pleased when I left. That day, I happened to look at a map of the city. For a moment it seemed incomprehensible to me that anyone would build a whole city when all that is needed was a room for her.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance