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

Bernard Malamud

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Metaphor Sometimes Two
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Down Forever Hurt Obstacles Overnight
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

Circles Cutting Experts
If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stations Track Train
There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Fixers Wrong
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

Ideas Reform Revision Work Writing
We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Apology Country Russia
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Civilized Language Persecuted
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Sadness Tragedy Wine
You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Down Sitting Writing
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Insects Loneliness Lonely Matter Men Stars
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

People Stories Style

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

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

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Popular Authors

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