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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.

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
And if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer – he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diminishing Humanity Small Some Withdraw
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Looks Lost Mind
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
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
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Fantasy Funn Marriage Return
Politics isn’t in my nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nature Politics Work
It was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’
BERNARD MALAMUD

Biography Done Want Yelling
Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Inspire Life Resurrecting
A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Insects Loneliness Lonely Matter Men Stars
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pleasure Revision Writing
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
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Courage Inspirational Inspiring
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men

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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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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Popular Authors

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