You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.
BERNARD MALAMUDAll men are Jews, though few men know it.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
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… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.
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Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
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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.
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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.
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The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.
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If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
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No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
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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.
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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.
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The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.
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In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
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And if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer – he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.
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One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand.
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Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD