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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.

Bernard Malamud

Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Boring Live Mode 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
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
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
… 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
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Follow Joy Life Your Heart
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
Politics isn’t in my nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nature Politics Work
Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Down Forever Hurt Obstacles Overnight
One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Fantasy Funn Marriage Return
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
As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Long Men Perseverance
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUD

Course Normal Steps
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Blame Giving Misery

To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.

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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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