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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

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Baseball Mythology Quality
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
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
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
… 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
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Constructs Freedom Invent Men
Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Clothes Kind Men
Politics isn’t in my nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nature Politics Work
In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ate Dream Success
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
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
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
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
Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.
BERNARD MALAMUD

People Stories Style
Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Boring Live Mode 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.

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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.

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