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We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.

Bernard Malamud

To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Character Discipline Writing
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Follow Joy Life Your Heart
Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Happiness Plus Space
Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Change Ears World
Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It’s a strange world, why make it stranger?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Adventure Moon Stars
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
I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Give Up Giving Thinking
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Freedom Others Purpose
One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Fantasy Funn Marriage Return
I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Confusion Giving Order
In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ate Dream Success
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Blame Giving Misery
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….
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Firsts Ideas
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 didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.

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We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.

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