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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 Malamud

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Bernard Malamud
Age: 71 †
Born: 1914
Born: April 26
Died: 1986
Died: March 18
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Writing
Wants
Revision
Way
Learning
Enhance
Pleasure
Exquisite
Knowledge
Pleasures
Idea
Reform
Ideas
Somewhere
Firsts
Works
Drafts
First
Fiction
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Where to look if you've lost your mind?
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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
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The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
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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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The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.
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The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'
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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.
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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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When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
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Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.
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What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
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Charity you can give even when you haven't got.
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Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
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