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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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More quotes by Bernard Malamud

If I may, I would at this point urge young writers not to be too much concerned with the vagaries of the marketplace.

I would write a book, or a short story, 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.

If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.

I have given my life to writing without regret, except when I consider what in my work I might have done better.

I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bernard Malamud (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.