Quote

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
Pleasure
Exquisite
Knowledge
Pleasures
Idea
Reform
Ideas
Somewhere
Firsts
Works
Drafts
First
Fiction
Enlarge
Writing
Wants
Revision
Way
Learning
Enhance

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

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Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
Bernard Malamud
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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.
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One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
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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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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
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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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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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Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.
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Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
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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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A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
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As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
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The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
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The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.
Bernard Malamud
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We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
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Charity you can give even when you haven't got.
Bernard Malamud
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
Bernard Malamud
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The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
Bernard Malamud
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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
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The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
Bernard Malamud