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 MALAMUDSpace plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
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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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Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.
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We can’t all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
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One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
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A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.
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Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
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We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.
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A man had to learn, it was his nature.
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(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
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There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.
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We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
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The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
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Life is a tragedy full of joy.
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If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD