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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.

Bernard Malamud

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Reform Revision Work Writing
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing
The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Accept Book Imperfect Uncertain Until
There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Fixers Wrong
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Dark Experiences Mystical Self
Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.
BERNARD MALAMUD

People Stories Style
Politics isn’t in my nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nature Politics Work
When I don’t feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Bury Feels Hope Hurt
I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Broken Expect Heart
You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Men Pity Surprise
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Past Recapture Time
Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Frivolous Leisure Matter
The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Experience Past
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst

To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.

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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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