Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamudwas an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer, about antisemitism in Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 April 1914
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
Writers who can't invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn't paint people, so he painted chairs.
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
You can't eat language but it eases thirst.
There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'
When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.