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 MALAMUDIf your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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Life is a tragedy full of joy.
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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.
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A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
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You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
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The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
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I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
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Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It’s a strange world, why make it stranger?
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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.
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One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand.
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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.
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I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
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… 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.
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Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
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All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.
BERNARD MALAMUD