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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

(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clothes Kind Men
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Looks Lost Mind
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Constructs Freedom Invent Men
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
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
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
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
Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Frivolous Leisure Matter
If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stations Track Train
It was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’
BERNARD MALAMUD

Biography Done Want Yelling
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
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
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men
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
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

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.

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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.

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