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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

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Afterthought Flower Language
If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Few Forget Jokes Remind
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
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
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diversity Justice Know Learn Men
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Happiness Plus Space
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUD

Course Normal Steps
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
You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Down Sitting Writing
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pleasure Revision Writing
The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Freedom Others Purpose
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Circles Cutting Experts
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Courage Inspirational Inspiring

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

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

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