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

Bernard Malamud

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
Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Happiness Plus Space
As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Baseball Mythology Quality
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Who You Are 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
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
Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Down Forever Hurt Obstacles Overnight
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Looks Lost Mind
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
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
How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Assuming Discipline Matter Works
You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Across Anger Coal Hot
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

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

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

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