Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUDSomewhere 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.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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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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A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
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Life is a tragedy full of joy.
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In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
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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.
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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
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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 -
The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
It was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Nationality isn’t soul.
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If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
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Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.
BERNARD MALAMUD







