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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

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

Suffering Taught Uselessness
We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Life Live Suffering Two
There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Dark Experiences Mystical Self
The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Freedom Others Purpose
You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Identity Who You Are
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pleasure Revision Writing
Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Back Children Games Love
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Knowledge Littles Sometime
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
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
Politics isn’t in my nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nature Politics Work
The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Experience Past
… 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
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
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

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….

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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….

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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