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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
Reading
Surprise
Worth
Writer

More quotes by 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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There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
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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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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A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
Bernard Malamud
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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.
Bernard Malamud
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Politics isn't in my nature.
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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The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
Bernard Malamud
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Where to look if you've lost your mind?
Bernard Malamud
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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.
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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Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
Bernard Malamud
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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
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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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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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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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
Bernard Malamud