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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Bernard Malamud

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
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
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
One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Apparteally Attempt Confusion Experience Time Uncontrolled
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Knowledge Littles Sometime
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Believe Cloud Sky
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ate Dream Success
It’s one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it’s another not to be able to live by what one does know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diversity Justice Know Learn Men
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Baseball Mythology Quality
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men
If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stations Track Train
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Follow Joy Life Your Heart
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Metaphor Sometimes Two
We can’t all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Human Relations Stranger World
Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Happiness Plus Space
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
How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Assuming Discipline Matter Works
I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Afterthought Flower Language
You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Identity Who You Are
First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it….
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Firsts Ideas
If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Cracks Eventually Mystery Real Track
(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clothes Kind Men
Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Sadness Tragedy Wine
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

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Popular Authors

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