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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

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

Course Normal Steps
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
There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Dark Experiences Mystical Self
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Blame Giving Misery
Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Inspire Life Resurrecting
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Down Sitting Writing
We can’t all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Human Relations Stranger World
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Civilized Language Persecuted
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
What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Suffering Taught Uselessness
How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Believe Both God Stranger
In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ate Dream Success
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
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Charity Giving Havens
The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Freedom Others Purpose
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
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Life Live Suffering Two
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
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
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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