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Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.

Bernard Malamud

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
When I don’t feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Bury Feels Hope Hurt
We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Apology Country Russia
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
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
The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Experience Past
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Blame Giving Misery
You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Clothes Kind Men
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Men Tattoo Walk Wall Window
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUD

Course Normal Steps
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Change Ears World
If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stations Track Train
Politics isn’t in my nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nature Politics Work
… 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
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
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
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Civilized Language Persecuted
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
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pleasure Revision Writing
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
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories

Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.

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Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.

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Popular Authors

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