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“I had had a feeling of freedom because of the sudden change in my life. By comparison to what had come before, I felt immensely free. But then, once I became used to that freedom, even small tasks became more difficult. I placed constraints on myself, and filled the hours of the day. Or perhaps it was even more complicated than that. Sometimes I did exactly what I wanted to do all day—I lay on the sofa and read a book, or I typed up an old diary—and then the most terrifying sort of despair would descend on me: the very freedom I was enjoying seemed to say that what I did in my day was arbitrary, and that therefore my whole life and how I spent it was arbitrary.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“The Dog Hair The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. When we come home late, there is no one waiting for us. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don’t throw them away. We have a wild hope—if only we collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“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, Can't and Won't

“I had reached a juncture in my reading life that is familiar to those who have been there: in the allotted time left to me on earth, should I read more and more new books, or should I cease with that vain consumption—vain because it is endless—and begin to reread those books that had given me the intensest pleasure in my past.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“Everything was sharper, clearer, and closer, as though, before, I had been seeing only little bits at a time, not all of it, of all of it but veiled or clouded. What was blocking my view before? Was there a veil between me and the world, or did I have blinkers on that narrowed my vision and kept me looking ahead? I did not know this until now--that I must have had a habit of not looking all around me. It was not that I had taken everything for granted before, but that I could not look at everything at once. Why? Was it so that I would not be tempted to do what I did not have the time or money to do, or so that I would not even think about something too distracting? I had to ignore of much of the world, or turn my thoughts away from it and back to the business at hand, whatever that might be...I used to think these places had to remain at just this distance, that I should long for them and that they should be almost imaginary, and that I should never visit them. Now, for a while, feeling as though I were outside my life, I thought I could visit them. At the same time, I felt closer to strangers. It was as thought something had been taken away that used to stand between me and them. I don't know if this was connected with the feeling that I was not inside my own life anymore. I suppose by "my own life" I mean the habitual worries, plans, and constraints that I thought were no longer even relevant.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“This dull, difficult novel I have brought with me on my trip—I keep trying to read it. I have gone back to it so many times, each time dreading it and each time finding it no better than the last time, that by now it has become something of an old friend. My old friend the bad novel.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“Sometimes the grief was nearby, waiting, just barely held back, and I could ignore it for a while. But at other times it was like a cup that was always full and kept spilling over.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“But on that particular day I did not even begin to feel interested in this chore, and was suddenly more deeply bored than I have ever been before, and just turned around and went back inside. Which made me wonder why I wanted to do this chore at all, on other days, and also which was real: my slight interest on other days or my profound boredom now. And it made me wonder if I really should be profoundly bored by this chore all the time and never do it again, and if there was something wrong with my mind that I was not bored by it all the time.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“In those days, I wanted to cry, I wanted to shout, I wanted to wring my hands and complain, and I did try to complain to some people, though I could never cry or complain as much as I wanted to. Some people listened and tried to be helpful, but they could never listen long enough; the conversation always had to come to an end.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“...as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth meanwhile was circling so far below us and we were so high up in a defective airplane that would have trouble landing.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“The first New Year after they died felt like another betrayal -- we were leaving behind the last year in which they had lived, a year they had known, and starting on a year that they would never experience.
There was also some confusion in my mind, in the months afterwards. It was not that I thought she was still alive. But at the same time I couldn't believe that she was actually gone. Suddenly the choice wasn't so simple: either alive or not alive. It was as though not being alive did not have to mean she was dead, as though there were some third possibility.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“The old vacuum cleaner keeps dying on her
over and over
until at last the cleaning woman
scares it by yelling:
"Motherfucker!”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“She is bending over her child. She can’t leave her. The
child is laid out in state on a table. She wants to take one more photograph of the child, probably the last. In life, the child would never sit still for a photograph. She says to herself, “I’m going to get the camera,â€� as if saying to the child, “Don’t move.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“105 years old:
she wouldn't be alive today
even if she hadn't died.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“I had never before thought so clearly about all the scenes that took place when I wasn't there to witness them. And then, I had a stranger and less pleasant thought: not only was I not necessary to those scenes, and not necessary to those lives that continued to go on without me, but in fact, I was not necessary at all. I didn't have to exist.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“The first New Year after they died felt like another betrayal--we were leaving behind the last year in which they had lived, a year they had known, and starting on a year that they would never experience.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“Once she was gone, every memory was suddenly precious, even the bad ones, even the times I was irritated with her, or she was irritated with me. Then it seemed a luxury to be irritated.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“She knows she is in Chicago. But she does not yet realize that she is in Illinois.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“They do sometimes protest...At these times, she sounds authoritative. But she has no authority.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“Just as it is hard for us, in our garden, to stop weeding, because there is always another weed there in front of us, it may be hard for her to stop grazing, because there are always a few more shoots of fresh grass just ahead of her.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“The snow on their faces is so white that how the white patches on their faces, which once looked so white against their black, are a shade of yellow.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“If they finally move, is it because they are warm enough, or is it that they are stiff, or bored?”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“He says to us: They don't really do anything. Then he adds: But of course there is not a lot for them to do.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“It is the lowered head that makes her seem less noble than, say, a horse, or a deer surprised in the woods. More exactly, it is her lowered head and neck. As she stands still, the top of her head is level with her back, or even a little lower, and so she seems to be hanging her head in discouragement, embarrassment, or shame. There is at least a suggestion of humility and dullness about her. But all these suggestions are false.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“One gains courage from the one in front of her and moves forward a few steps, passing her by just a little. Now the one farthest back gains courage from the one in front and moves forward until she, in turn, is the leader. And so in this way, taking courage from one another, they advance, as a group, towards the strange thing in front of them.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“That fall, after the summer when they both died, she and my father, there was a point when I wanted to say to them, All right, you have died, I know that, and you've been dead for a while, we have all absorbed this and we've explored the feelings we had at first, in reaction to it, surprising feelings, some of them, and the feelings we're having now that a few months have gone by--- but now it's time for you to come back. You have been away long enough.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might like it.

She is like me. She likes the things I like. She likes this. So I might like it.

I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.

I think I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. She is like me. Therefore, I might really like it.

I think I like it. I show it to her. (She is like me. She likes the things I like.) She likes it. So I might really like it.

I like it. I show it to her. She likes it. (She says the other one is “just plain awful.â€�) She is like me. She likes the things I like. So I might really like it.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't

“Cat, gray tabby, calm, watches large, black ant. Man, rapt, stands staring at cat and ant. Ant advances along path. Ant halts, baffled. Ant back-tracks fast—straight at cat. Cat, alarmed, backs away. Man, standing, staring, laughs. Ant changes path again. Cat, calm again, watches again.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't