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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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A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
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Ithink Isaid'All menare Jews excepttheydon't know it.'I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it's an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.
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I fix what's broken - except in the heart.
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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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There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
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The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
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A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
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The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.
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Politics isn't in my nature.
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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
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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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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
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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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