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 MALAMUDSome men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It’s a strange world, why make it stranger?
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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A man had to learn, it was his nature.
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Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
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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.
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Life is a tragedy full of joy.
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I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.
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We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
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What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
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I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
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How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.
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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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Politics isn’t in my nature.
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We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
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Ithink Isaid’All menare Jews excepttheydon’t know it.’I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it’s an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.
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We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
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If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
BERNARD MALAMUD