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 MALAMUDSomewhere 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.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
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 -
All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Some 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?
BERNARD MALAMUD -
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.
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Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD







