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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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Bernard Malamud
Age: 71 †
Born: 1914
Born: April 26
Died: 1986
Died: March 18
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Pure
Biography
Fiction
Mud
Past
Legend
Make
Biographies
Time
Clay
Life
Legends
Wholly
Exudes
Ultimately
Recaptured

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The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
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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.
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The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.
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The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.
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One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
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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.
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A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
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Where to look if you've lost your mind?
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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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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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Charity you can give even when you haven't got.
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The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
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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.
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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
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We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is most of us have to be strangers.
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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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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.
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I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
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