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

Bernard Malamud

As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Long Men Perseverance
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men
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
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Blame Giving Misery
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Apparteally Attempt Confusion Experience Time Uncontrolled
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving 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
If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Few Forget Jokes Remind
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
Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Charity Giving Havens
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Constructs Freedom Invent Men
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst
I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Broken Expect Heart
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Past Recapture Time
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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