Lydia Davis: belief

Transcript context

…How ambitious are you? I’m not ambitious in the worldly sense. I’ve never been someone who was driven by, “Oh, the public’s going to forget me, so I’ve got to get another book out within the next two years,” which I know does motivate some writers. Or at least if they prefer not to think that way, they sometimes have an agent or a publisher who says, “You’ve got to give us another book in two years.” But that’s never been the case for me. That’s why some books are seven years later, and I’m doing other things. Often, I’m working on, say, another project that won’t bear fruit. I think George Steiner has a book, which I have not read — I haven’t even opened it — but a book detailing all the books he didn’t write. Yes, that’s quite interesting.…

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