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A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.

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
Surprise
Worth
Writer
Reading

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

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If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
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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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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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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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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.
Bernard Malamud
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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
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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A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
Bernard Malamud
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We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is most of us have to be strangers.
Bernard Malamud
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Where to look if you've lost your mind?
Bernard Malamud
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One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
Bernard Malamud
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When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
Bernard Malamud
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The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.
Bernard Malamud
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You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter.
Bernard Malamud
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
Bernard Malamud
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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.'
Bernard Malamud
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You see in others who you are.
Bernard Malamud
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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
Bernard Malamud