Quotes by Bernard Malamud - Page 2

All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Accomplishment
Littles
People
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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.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Men
Long
Perseverance
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Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Sadness
Tragedy
Wine
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I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Metaphor
Sometimes
Two
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Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Life
Book
Inspire
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Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Happiness
Space
Plus
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Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Life
Joy
Loss
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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.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Men
Diversity
Justice
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The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.
Bernard Malamud / Author
About Yourself
Important
Writing
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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 / Author
Men
Doors
Tattoo
Walks
Wall
Life Time Man
Through
Where
Windows
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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.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Live Life
Suffering
Two
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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 / Author
Back Love
Children
Games
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Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Book
Matter
Would Be
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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.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Believe
Clouds
Sky
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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 / Author
Circles
Cutting
Experts
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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 / Author
People
Stories
Style
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I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Book
Three
Writing
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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.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Cracks
Real
Track
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You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Down And
Sitting Down
Writing
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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 / Author
Forever
Hurt
Obstacles
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Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It's a strange world, why make it stranger?
Bernard Malamud / Author
Adventure
Moon
Stars
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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 / Author
Time
Clay
Past
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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 / Author
Dark
Mystical Experiences
Self
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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 / Author
Loneliness
Lonely
Stars
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Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Ideas
Reform
Writing
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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 / Author
Men
Doubt
Thinking
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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.... 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 / Author
Book
Firsts
Ideas
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To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.
Bernard Malamud / Author
Character
Discipline
Writing
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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. One 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, 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 / Author
Confusion
Giving
Order
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