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The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

Bernard Malamud

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

Clothes Kind Men
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Boring Live Mode Writing
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Follow Joy Life Your Heart
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
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Who You Are Writing
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Insects Loneliness Lonely Matter Men Stars
How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Assuming Discipline Matter Works
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst
All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Accomplishment Littles People
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
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
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
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diminishing Humanity Small Some Withdraw
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

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The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

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