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You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

Bernard Malamud

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
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Boring Live Mode Writing
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Civilized Language Persecuted
How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Believe Both God Stranger
Ithink Isaid’All menare Jews excepttheydon’t know it.’I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it’s an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Doubt Men Metaphoric Statement Thinking
All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Accomplishment Littles People
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
What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Suffering Taught Uselessness
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Men Tattoo Walk Wall Window
The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Freedom Others Purpose
I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Broken Expect Heart
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories

You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

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You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

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Popular Authors

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