The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUDOne’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
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Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
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The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.
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You see in others who you are.
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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.
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I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
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You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.
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If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
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The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.
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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.
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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.
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Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
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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.
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Nationality isn’t soul.
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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
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If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.
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Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.
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Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
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For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
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No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
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One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
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When I don’t feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
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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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A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD