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You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

Bernard Malamud

You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pleasure Revision Writing
First 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….
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Firsts Ideas
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Courage Inspirational Inspiring
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
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Cracks Eventually Mystery Real Track
We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Apology Country Russia
What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Suffering Taught Uselessness
Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Frivolous Leisure Matter
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Metaphor Sometimes Two
You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Identity Who You Are
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men
How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Believe Both God Stranger
I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Boring Live Mode Writing
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.

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You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

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Popular Authors

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