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You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

Bernard Malamud

… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Believe Cloud Sky
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUD

Course Normal Steps
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pages Self Stories
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
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
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men
I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Afterthought Flower Language
The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Experience Past
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
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
In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ate Dream Success
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
I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Give Up Giving Thinking
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick

You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

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You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

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Popular Authors

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