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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
Worth
Writer
Reading
Surprise

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

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The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
Bernard Malamud
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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
Bernard Malamud
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There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.
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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There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
Bernard Malamud
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I fix what's broken - except in the heart.
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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I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
Bernard Malamud
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I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
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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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
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
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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.
Bernard Malamud
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One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
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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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
Bernard Malamud
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What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
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