Quote

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.

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
Time
Understand
Compel
Write
Prose
Three
Improve
Stills
Third
Still
Thirds
Book
Second
Must
Least
Writing
Times

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

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I fix what's broken - except in the heart.
Bernard Malamud
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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
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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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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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We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
Bernard Malamud
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The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
Bernard Malamud
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
Bernard Malamud
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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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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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A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
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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Politics isn't in my nature.
Bernard Malamud
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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
Bernard Malamud
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Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.
Bernard Malamud
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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.
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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I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
Bernard Malamud
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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.
Bernard Malamud