Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
BERNARD MALAMUDFirst 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….
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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A man had to learn, it was his nature.
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For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
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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.
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The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
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If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
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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.
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Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
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Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
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There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.
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If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
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Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
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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.
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We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.
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We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
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You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
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Nationality isn’t soul.
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I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
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The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
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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.
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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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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
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(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
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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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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