Bernard Malamud Quotes - Page 3

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.

Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.

Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.

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.

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.

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.

Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.

Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.

One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

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.

You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

Politics isn't in my nature.

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it.... The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

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.

You can't eat language but it eases thirst.

I fix what's broken - except in the heart.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

A man had to learn, it was his nature.

All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.