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You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

Bernard Malamud

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

Suffering Taught Uselessness
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
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
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Courage Inspirational Inspiring
I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Down Sitting Writing
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
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing
In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ate Dream Success
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
It’s one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it’s another not to be able to live by what one does know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diversity Justice Know Learn Men
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
One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Fantasy Funn Marriage Return
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

You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

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You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

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