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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

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
Story
Stories
Firsts
First
Drafts
Learning

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
Bernard Malamud
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The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.
Bernard Malamud
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
Bernard Malamud
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There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
Bernard Malamud
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I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.
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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.
Bernard Malamud
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I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
Bernard Malamud
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The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.
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.
Bernard Malamud
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A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
Bernard Malamud
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What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
Bernard Malamud
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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
Bernard Malamud
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A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
Bernard Malamud
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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.
Bernard Malamud
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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
Bernard Malamud
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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
Bernard Malamud
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Charity you can give even when you haven't got.
Bernard Malamud
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Where to look if you've lost your mind?
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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The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
Bernard Malamud