Bernard Malamud Writing Quotations

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.

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 great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

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

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.

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.

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

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.