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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

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Bernard Malamud
Age: 71 †
Born: 1914
Born: April 26
Died: 1986
Died: March 18
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Live
Lonely
Matter
Matters
Insects
Way
Mystery
Island
Men
Stars
Cosmos
Easy
Islands
Sense
Separate
Body
Bodies
Best
Loneliness

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

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Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.
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It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'
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When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
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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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Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
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The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.
Bernard Malamud
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
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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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A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
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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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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
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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.
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I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
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Politics isn't in my nature.
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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
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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
Bernard Malamud
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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
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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