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 MALAMUDOne often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
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You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
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(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
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We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.
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One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
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A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
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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.
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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.
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… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.
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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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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.
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A man had to learn, it was his nature.
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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….
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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
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Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD