Lydia Quotes

What we focus on defines us, so if our focus is inward, on ourselves, we wind up defining for ourselves whether we are righteous or guilty. When we begin and end with us - with our self - we miss the heart of the gospel and never truly find the freedom for which we ache. ~ Lydia Brownback

My father, I never knew, except for this one time when he threw a ball and told me to go fetch it.
"Dad," I said. "Am I a dog?"
"Lydia," he said. "I apologize. ~ Jaclyn Moriarty

Oh how the world reflected you in its unending streams of atoms, churning atoms out of which significance beamed
significance, but not purpose. ~ Lydia Millet

One important thing was not to forget what he hoped to achieve in life. Another important thing was not to confuse a romantic picture of himself - as a doctor in Africa, for example - with a real possibility. And he tried not to lose sight of the fact that he was an adult in an adult world, with responsibilities. This was not easy: he would find himself sitting in the sun cutting out paper stars for a Christmas tree at the very moment other men were working to support large families or representing their countries in foreign places. When in moments of difficult truth-seeking he saw this incongruity, he felt sick that he should be saddled with himself, as though he were his own unwanted guest. ~ Lydia Davis

One girl raved about a nice voicemail a guy had recently left her. I kindly requested she play it and heard this gem: 'Hey, Lydia. It's Sam. Just calling to say what's up. Gimme a ring when you get a chance.'

THAT WAS IT.

I pleaded to know what was so great about this. She sweetly recalled that 'he remembered my name, he said hi, and he told me to call him back.'

Never mind the fact that what she described was the content of LITERALLY EVERY VOICE MAIL IN HISTORY. Name, hello, please call back. Not really a boatload of charm on display. To fail this test, a guy would have to leave a message that said: 'No greeting. This is man. I don't remember you. End communication. ~ Aziz Ansari

In some sense the text and the translator are locked in struggle - 'I attacked that sentence, it resisted me, I attacked another, it eluded me' - a struggle in which, curiously, when the translator wins, the text wins too ... ~ Lydia Davis

Welcome back, Lydia. How was the tea party?"
"Yes. …...Actually, Edgar, there's something I have to apologise to you about."
"Did something happen?"
"I told everyone that I'm not of noble birth."
"Oh, is that all."
"'Is that all'... They might think you're not a proper aristocrat for having married a commoner."
"Let them think what they want. An aristocrat's true worth isn't their social position or their lineage, but their personal pride. They don't have any proper pride, and that's why they're particular about that sort of thing. ~ Mizue Tani

We don't want to be the conquistadors. We want to be Charles Darwin. ~ Lydia Millet

Sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a temper as Lydia; ~ Jane Austen

Lydia, five years old, standing on tiptoe to watch vinegar and baking soda foam in the sink. Lydia tugging a heavy book from the shelf, saying, "Show me again, show me another." Lydia, touching the stethoscope, ever so gently, to her mother's heart. Tears blur Marilyn's sight. It had not been science that Lydia had loved ~ Celeste Ng

Not on the outer world For inward joy depend; Enjoy the luxury of thought, Make thine own self friend; Not with the restless throng, In search of solace roam But with an independent zeal Be intimate at home. ~ Lydia Sigourney

It was the most exciting sentence I've ever heard," Lydia said. Reaching out, she stroked the back of Jean's hand. "In front of your friends, to call me your love. ~ Fiona Shaw

Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I shall remain so. I have but one prayer at heart; and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last. ~ Lydia M. Child

As a dedicated, successful writer, Lydia Sigourney violated essential elements of the very gender roles she celebrated. In the process, she offered young, aspiring women writers around the country an example of the possibilities of achieving both fame and economic reward. ~ Lydia Sigourney

Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you're trying to do. And be patient. ~ Lydia Davis

An appearance of delicacy is inseparable from sweetness and gentleness of character. ~ Lydia Sigourney

A human heart can never grow old if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the reproduction of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn leaves. ~ Lydia M. Child

I see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators. ~ Lydia Davis

I always interrupt work with other work, either in a small way or big way, so that's normal. ~ Lydia Davis

When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia. ~ Guy Davenport

There are three things that robots cannot do," wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote "Show preference without reason (LOVE)" and then "Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)" and finally "Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE). ~ Lydia Netzer

I don't like to hurt people's feelings, and I don't like to knock other writers as a matter of principle. ~ Lydia Davis

Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean. ~ Lydia Davis

We must not forget that all great revolutions and reformations would look mean and meagre if examined in detail as they occurred at the time. ~ Lydia M. Child

Fear is the white lipp'd sire
Of subterfuge and treachery. ~ Lydia Sigourney

But no matter how clearly I saw what I was doing, I would go on doing it, as though I simply allowed my shame to sit there alongside my need to do it, one separate from the other. I often chose to do the wrong thing and feel bad about it rather than to do the right thing, if the wrong thing was what I wanted. ~ Lydia Davis

Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe. ~ Lydia Sigourney

Without knowing it he drew a very pleasant picture of an affectionate, happy family who lived unpretentiously in circumstances of moderate affluence at peace with themselves and the world and undisturbed by any fear that anything might happen to affect their security. The life he described lacked neither grace nor dignity; it was healthy and normal, and through its intellectual interests not entirely material; the persons who led it were simple and honest, neither ambitious nor envious, prepared to do their duty by the state and by their neighbors according to their lights; and there was in them neither harm nor malice. If Lydia saw how much of their good nature, their kindliness, their unpleasing self-complacency depended on the long-established and well-ordered prosperity of the country that had given them birth; if she had an inkling that, like children building castles on the sea sand, they might at any moment be swept away by a tidal wave, she allowed no sign of it to appear on her face. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing! ~ Lydia Davis

This whole state of affairs was nothing short of a disaster.
"Frowning, Lydia plopped--very unladylike--onto the firm morning room settee.
Disaster. Her father would not appreciate the word's use--too much emotion, smacked of an indecent amount of sensibility. ~ Cindy Anstey

By tomorrow Marilyn would forget this moment: Lydia's shout, the shattered edges in her tone. It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexity like scales. ~ Celeste Ng

The excess of all good things is mischievous. ~ Lydia M. Child

Claire slumped down into the overstuffed chair in her office as she watched her sister go through Paul's collection of files. Lydia seemed energized by the prospect of uncovering more lurid details, but Claire felt as though she was suffocating under the weight of every new revelation. She couldn't believe that only two days ago, she had watched Paul's coffin as it was lowered into the ground. Her body might as well have been buried along with him. Her skin felt desiccated. She had a deep chill in her bones. Even blinking was a challenge, because the temptation to keep her eyes closed was almost too much to resist. ~ Karin Slaughter

And is death not the ultimate orgasm, a return to that otherworldly ether, whose very origins were indeed a Big Bang, the ultimate explosion, the supreme chaos, whose resonance is the vibration we constantly seek to reproduce in everything we do. ~ Lydia Lunch

A few of the guests, who had the misfortune of being too near the windows, were seized and feasted on at once. When Elizabeth stood, she saw Mrs. Long struggle to free herself as two female dreadfuls bit into her head, cracking her skull like a walnut, and sending a shower of dark blood spouting as high as the chandeliers.
As guests fled in every direction, Mr. Bennet's voice cut through the commotion. "Girls! Pentagram of Death!"
Elizabeth immediately joined her four sisters, Jane, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia in the center of the dance floor. Each girl produced a dagger from her ankle and stood at the tip of an imaginary five-pointed star. From the center of the room, they began stepping outward in unison - each thrusting a razor-sharp dagger with one hand, the other hand modestly tucked into the small of her back. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

We aren't going to choose paths of wisdom if we don't trust the One who has marked out those paths for us. Fear of the Lord is trust in the Lord ~ Lydia Brownback

Cam scratched his nape. "You know what I don't get? How women can spend the majority of their lives in shopping malls but still say they have nothing to wear." Lydia snorted. "You know what I don't get? How men can spend the majority of their lives playing sports where they're being trampled on and listening to noisy mobs, yet they're put off by shopping, when it's no different." Both males tilted their heads, conceding that. ~ Suzanne Wright

If we center our thoughts and activities on ourselves, our world grows increasingly narrow, and over time our view of reality is warped. Without realizing it, we become the measure of all things in our own minds. ~ Lydia Brownback

Politics are always involved, even in my love songs. ~ Lydia Lunch

I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc. ~ Lydia Davis

We feel an affinity with a certain thinker because we agree with him; or because he shows us what we were already thinking; or because he shows us in a more articulate form what we were already thinking; or because he shows us what we were on the point of thinking; or what we would sooner or later have thought; or what we would have thought much later if we hadn't read it now; or what we would have been likely to think but never would have thought if we hadn't read it now; or what we would have liked to think but never would have thought if we hadn't read it now. ~ Lydia Davis

I've always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you've got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you're doing, but the truth is not popular. ~ Lydia Lunch

When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel. ~ Lydia Davis

God let [Jonah] go his own way, as he does with us when we insist on running our own show; but because God is merciful, he will make sure that any way we take away from him doesn't work out so well. ~ Lydia Brownback

Sometimes victory is won by

surrendering something great. And in surrender, we unburden ourselves so clarity can come through. ~ Lydia Michaels

She hated a mown lawn. Maybe that was because mow was the reverse of won, the beginning of the name of what she was - a woman. A mown lawn had a sad sound to it, like a long moan. From her, a mown lawn made a long moan. Lawn had some of the letters of man, though the reverse of man would be Nam, a bad war. A raw war. Lawn also contained the letters of law. In fact, lawn was a contraction of laman. Certainly a lawman could and did mow a lawn. Law and order could be seen as starting from lawn order, valued by so many Americans. More lawn could be made using a lawn mower. A lawn mower did make more lawn. More lawn was a contraction of more lawmen. Did more lawn in America make more lawmen in America? Did more lawn make more Nam? More mown lawn made more long moan, from her. Or a lawn mourn. So often, she said, Americans wanted more mown lawn. All of America might be one long mown lawn. A lawn not mown grows long, she said: better a long lawn. Better a long lawn and a mole. Let the lawman have the mown lawn, she said. Or the moron, the lawn moron. ~ Lydia Davis

Plantain leaves laid upon a wound are cooling and healing. Half ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child

I had to de-program myself. From myself. Had to reinvent rituals of purification. So full of the vagrant pollutions of others. It was time to detox. Not only from alcohol, sex, and drugs, but from needy leeches who looked to swab me with their sores. Detox from my own needy lechery. Had to locate the center wound and cauterize. Undo the original sin, the origin of my sickness ... Had to learn to replace Them, It, Want, Hurt, Anger, Sorrow, Loss, with Power, Healing, Wisdom, Fulfillment, Satisfaction. ~ Lydia Lunch

The existence of another, competing translation is a good thing, in general, and only immediately discouraging to one person - the translator who, after one, two, or three years of more or less careful work, sees another, and perhaps superior, version appear as if overnight. ~ Lydia Davis

If they finally move, is it because they are warm enough, or is it that they are stiff, or bored? ~ Lydia Davis

[U]sefulness is happiness, and ... all other things are but incidental. ~ Lydia M. Child

Everyone gets surprised because neither one of my parents play golf. Like I said in my speech, my aunt and uncle really love golf, and we visited them, and she gave me two clubs. Like people think when they don't know who my dad is, they think he's my coach. ~ Lydia Ko

Two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a temper as Lydia; and, removed from the influence of Lydia's example, she became, by proper attention and management, less irritable, less ignorant, ~ Jane Austen

Then, although it was still the end of the story, I put it at the beginning of the novel, as if I needed to tell the end first in order to go on and tell the rest. It would have been simpler to begin at the beginning, but the beginning didn't mean much without what came after, and what came after didn't mean much without the end. ~ Lydia Davis

There are also men in the world. Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women - endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone. ~ Lydia Davis

The people in your happy memories have to be the same people who want to have you in their own happy memories. ~ Lydia Davis

As the writer, I may choose to ignore the emotional heart of the matter, and focus on details, and trust that the heart of the matter will be conveyed nevertheless. ~ Lydia Davis

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story. ~ Lydia Davis

Remember, cousins are forever! ~ Lydia Howe

Kaden still influenced almost everything I did. He was on my mind constantly yet I had learned to control him, push him to a corner where I could merely observe and feel his presence. ~ Lydia Kelly

Times of difficulty arise because people are lovers of themselves and lovers of money and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of good and lovers of God. ~ Lydia Brownback

I love you thousand times.. ~ Lydia

I believe happiness is a chemical imbalance - it's a silly thing to strife for. But satisfaction - if you seek satisfaction, you can succeed. Satisfaction is knowing that you're doing the best that you can do; you're living your life to the fullest. ~ Lydia Lunch

Forgiveness is not forgetting, but it is the urge to release those who have hurt you the most. ~ Lydia Nantaba Bogere

because she couldn't write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn ~ Lydia Davis

Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who is in love with either/or. ~ Margaret Atwood

She pictured her Alzheimer's as a demon in her head, tearing a reckless and illogical path of destruction, ripping apart the wiring from "Lydia now" to "Lydia then ~ Lisa Genova

[Author's Note:] When I was sixteen, two of my cousins were brutally raped by four strangers and thrown off a bridge in St. Louis, Missouri. My brother was beaten and also forced off the bridge. I wrote about that horrible crime in my first book, my memoir, A Rip in Heaven. Because that crime and the subsequent writing of the book were both formative experience in my life, I became a person who is always, automatically, more interested in stories about victims than perpetrators. I'm interested in characters who suffer inconceivable hardship, in people who manage to triumph over extraordinary trauma. Characters like Lydia and Soledad. I'm less interested in the violent, macho stories of gangsters and law enforcement. Or in any case, I think the world has enough stories like those. Some fiction set in the world of the cartels and narcotraficantes is compelling and important - I read much of it during my early research. Those novels provide readers with an understanding of the origins of the some of the violence to our south. But the depiction of that violence can feed into some of the worst stereotypes about Mexico. So I saw an opening for a novel that would press a little more intimately into those stories, to imagine people on the flip side of that prevailing narrative. Regular people like me. How would I manage if I lived in a place that began to collapse around me? If my children were in danger, how far would I go to save them? I wanted to write about women, whose stories a ~ Jeanine Cummins

Sometimes it seemed to Lydia that work was the only certainty, the only lasting truth in a human world of fitful change. Work and the mountains remained. Joy was deceitful and as brief as a summer rainbow. Love was a spear upon which you hurled yourself in ecstasy--to discover pain and bear the wound forever. A man in your heart, the child of your flesh, a dream of your spirit--you gave yourself to them, wholly and in wonder, and they never knew you. ~ Wilma Dykeman

As things STAND now, I trust London more than I trust you.

Okay, so it fell a little short of a ringing endorsement, Emmett thought as he followed Lydia into the offices of the Transverse Wave Youth Shelter. She could have been a touch more eloquent and maybe a shade more dramatic.
I would trust London with my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor, would have done nicely. Or maybe, I would trust London to the ends of the universe.
But he would take what he could get. ~ Jayne Castle

There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface. ~ Lydia M. Child

Those who make candles will find it a great improvement to steep the wicks in lime-water and saltpetre, and dry them. The flame is clearer, and the tallow will not 'run. ~ Lydia Maria Francis Child

To observe the world carefully, to write a lot and often, on a schedule if necessary, to use the dictionary a lot, to look up word origins, to analyze closely the work of writers you admire, to read not only contemporaries but writers of the past, to learn at least one foreign language, to live an interesting life outside of writing. ~ Lydia Davis

Before, I was like 'Oh my God, I have to do this media, this media and this media,' but now I've learned these are stages you need to go through. If you play really good golf, you're going to get more media attention and more interest in you, and you'll get more confident handling it. ~ Lydia Ko

I just prefer instrumental. I don't need to hear what other people are singing. And if I need music as a backdrop to work or to think, I need to have that part of the brain clear - I don't need people feeding their fantasies into my vision. ~ Lydia Lunch

Trust is essential when you're planning to lie to everyone you know. ~ Lydia Kang

Lydia had met Stephen on a breast cancer charity fun run. She hadn't wanted to go on a fun run, because as far as Lydia was concerned, the words 'fun' and 'run' never, ever belonged in the same sentence. ~ Scarlett Bailey

I am a humanist not a feminist. There's a big difference. ~ Lydia Lunch

Lydia finally found it in herself to forgive her mother for seizing what small joy she could, whatever the consequences. Love, it seemed, had its own imperatives. ~ Anna Campbell

I think it's important to encourage gluttony in all its formats. ~ Lydia Lunch

Lydia was the kind of friend whom people referred to as a 'party favor'
always fun to be around but she doesn't have any patience for suffering unless it's her own. ~ Chelsea Handler

I've learned to do without a lot of things. If you have a lot of things, said Aunt Lydia, you get too attached to this material world and you forget about spiritual values. ~ Margaret Atwood

I decided to lock myself in. A forced segregation. Sabbatical. A retreat into myself. My selves. Play hide and go seek in the looking-glass. The mirror angled at the foot of my bed. Twisted reflections bouncing off into infinity. Obsessed with my image, the myriad of distored figurines who danced in front of me in rapid succession, every feature exaggerated, every slight imperfection a new delicacy. ~ Lydia Lunch

Honesty works against you in the entertainment field. I try to be a journalist and a documentarian, but that doesn't mean that people are going to embrace it at the moment. The point is I'm leaving the mark of my hysteria and the political hysteria, and that's it ... I can only do what I do. ~ Lydia Lunch

Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being. ~ Lydia M. Child

And then there was Lydia.

Lydia who had hurtled into his life – into their lives – with hair like fire, eyes like amethysts and a fuck-me scent so palpable that he'd betrayed the only woman he'd ever loved. ~ Dianna Hardy

Not all monsters do monsterous things ~ Lydia Martin

A woman has written yet another story that is not interesting, though it has a hurricane in it, and a hurricane usually promises to be interesting. ~ Lydia Davis

If your sadness looks that beautiful... I can't imagine what your happiness looks like. ~ Lydia Goodfellow

We have seen these bodies, she would think, and even long after we are gone some particle in the universe will hold a memory of the words we once used to describe their beauty. ~ Lydia Millet

The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words that are his own and not his own, writing a work not original to him, composing with utmost pains and without recognition of his pains or the fact that the composition really is his own. ~ Lydia Davis

In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery. ~ Lydia M. Child

Oh God, she could see it now - the police constable filling out a report: Mathematician drowned due to miscalculation. ~ Nina Rowan

Television's so quick, and there's so many other fun elements to it, but you don't get such good scripts and the time to really make much more three dimensional characters. ~ Lydia Leonard

Don't you agree?"
"Indeed," Robert answered without thought, and then sharply shook his head. "I beg your pardon. You were saying?"
"That Mr. Warner is a thorough investigator, and despite his doubts, I believe he will succeed in ferreting out our master criminal." She stared up at him from the settee, looking quite at ease.
"Master criminal?"
"Yes, Les and Morley could hardly be accused of the cleverness needed for such a planned endeavor."
"Yes … no…" With a frown, Robert scanned the room. "Indeed, a master … Where is Mr. Warner?"
Lydia laughed, a delightful carillon. "Robert, my dear friend, you were woolgathering. I thought as much; your expression was rather blank."
"Was it?" Robert was very glad to know that he did not look the lovesick calf he felt. ~ Cindy Anstey

Well,' Lydia said, 'I guess Armageddon's back on.'
Eliot fought back a grin.
'You're smiling?', Lydia said. She looked at her car and at their house and down the empty street. 'That's totally inappropriate. ~ D.L.E. Roger

Trust no one, I scold myself. Even if they smell good. ~ Lydia Kang

Why was this not a nightmare? Nightmares I could wake up from, but this was real and Father Aaron was a monster. "God Help Me," I wept. ~ Lydia Goodfellow

The word "fine" is the greatest abbreviation and obviously wrong. ~ Lydia Davis

All you care about is the control and power you have over me and I hate myself for giving that to you! ~ Lydia Kelly