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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

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

Baseball Mythology Quality
Ithink Isaid’All menare Jews excepttheydon’t know it.’I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it’s an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Doubt Men Metaphoric Statement Thinking
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
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
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
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Looks Lost Mind
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Constructs Freedom Invent Men
When I don’t feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Bury Feels Hope Hurt
I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Afterthought Flower Language
Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Back Children Games Love
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Who You Are Writing
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

Civilized Language Persecuted
The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Accept Book Imperfect Uncertain Until

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Malamud Quotes