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The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.

Bernard Malamud

You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Identity Who You Are
If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stations Track Train
All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Accomplishment Littles People
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
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
We can’t all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Human Relations Stranger World
I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Give Up Giving Thinking
All men are Jews, though few men know it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Jew Knows Men
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Looks Lost Mind
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
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
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
There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Men Tattoo Walk Wall Window
First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it….
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Apology Country Russia

The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.

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The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.

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Popular Authors

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