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There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.

Bernard Malamud

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
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Civilized Language Persecuted
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Cracks Eventually Mystery Real Track
I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Confusion Giving Order
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
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Blame Giving Misery
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Teaching Uncertainty Writing
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories
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
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Constructs Freedom Invent Men
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
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
You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Men Pity Surprise
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Apology Country Russia
There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Dark Experiences Mystical Self

There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.

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There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.

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Popular Authors

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