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Life is a tragedy full of joy.

Bernard Malamud

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

Change Ears World
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
It’s one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it’s another not to be able to live by what one does know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diversity Justice Know Learn Men
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
Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Back Children Games Love
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
I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Give Up Giving Thinking
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diminishing Humanity Small Some Withdraw
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Civilized Language Persecuted
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories
The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Experience Past
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Follow Joy Life Your Heart
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
The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pages Self Stories

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

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Life is a tragedy full of joy.

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