black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

Bernard Malamud

No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clay Experience Past
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
You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Identity Who You Are
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
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
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
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
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
We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Apology Country Russia
I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Give Up Giving Thinking
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Baseball Mythology Quality
Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Inspire Life Resurrecting

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Malamud Quotes