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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

Bernard Malamud

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

Men Pity Surprise
There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Men Tattoo Walk Wall Window
Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Inspire Life Resurrecting
Politics isn’t in my nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nature Politics Work
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Civilized Language Persecuted
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
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Courage Inspirational Inspiring
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
Ithink Isaid’All menare Jews excepttheydon’t know it.’I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it’s an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Doubt Men Metaphoric Statement Thinking
The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Accept Book Imperfect Uncertain Until
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
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
You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Down Sitting Writing
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Constructs Freedom Invent Men
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Knowledge Littles Sometime

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

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