Bernard Malamud Quotes

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.

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.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

You see in others who you are.

A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.

The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

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.

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.

A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.

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.

If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

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.

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.

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

For misery don't blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.

It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'

We didn't starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.

... 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.

All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.

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.

We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: "It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.

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

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.

Charity you can give even when you haven't got.

There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.

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.

A man had to learn, it was his nature.

One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

I fix what's broken - except in the heart.

Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.

How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?

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.

(Clothes) cannot change a man's nature. He's either kind or he isn't, with or without clothes.

As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.