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If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.

Bernard Malamud

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

Jew Knows Men
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
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
Nationality isn’t soul.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Nation Nationality Soul
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
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
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Constructs Freedom Invent Men
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
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing
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
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Blame Giving Misery
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Down Sitting Writing
There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Fixers Wrong
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss

If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.

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If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.

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