Bernard Malamud Quotes:

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

source: - Bernard Malamud (2003). “The Natural: A Novel”, p.148, Macmillan

Topics: Inspirational, Inspiring, Veterans Day, Memorial Day Heroes, War Veteran

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.

source: - 1973 Rembrandt's Hat,'The Man in the Drawer'.

Topics: Tattoo, Wall, Men

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

source: - Bernard Malamud (2017). “Dubin's Lives”, p.166, Random House

Topics: Steps, Normal

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

source: - New York Times, January 29, 1979.

Topics: Life, Joy, Tragedy

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

source: - "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life". The New York Times, March 20, 1988.

Topics: Writing, Revision, Pleasure

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

Topics: Baseball, Quality, Mythology

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

Topics: Moving, Writing, Ideas

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

source: - Bernard Malamud (2017). “Dubin's Lives”, p.146, Random House

Topics: Writing, Who You Are

A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.

source: - Bernard Malamud, Lawrence M. Lasher (1991). “Conversations with Bernard Malamud”, p.62, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Topics: Men, Constructs

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Topics: Stories, Firsts

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

Topics: Writing, Teach, Uncertainty

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

source: - 'Dubin's Lives' (1979) p. 20

Topics: Past, Experience, Clay

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

Topics: Life, Loss, Joy

... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.

source: - Bernard Malamud (1967). “A Malamud Reader”, p.46, Macmillan

Topics: Loneliness, People, Matter

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

Topics: Knowledge, Littles, Sometimes

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.

Topics: Book, Would Be, Matter

You see in others who you are.

Topics: Identity, Who You Are

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

Topics: Country, Apology, Russia, Fur Coats

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

Topics: Men, Clothes, Kind

Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.

Topics: Change, Ears, World

Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.

source: - Bernard Malamud (1979). “Dubin's Lives”, Penguin Books

Topics: Children, Games, Stranger, Ahead Of The Game, Back Love

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.

Topics: Dark, Self, Unity, Mystical Experiences

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

Topics: World, Stranger, Human Relations, Human Relationships

A man had to learn, it was his nature.

Topics: Learning, Men

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

source: - Bernard Malamud (2003). “The Natural: A Novel”, p.149, Macmillan

Topics: Giving Up, Thinking, Giving

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

Topics: Two, Sometimes, Metaphor

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.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Doubt, Metaphoric

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

Topics: Wine, Sadness, Tragedy

You can't eat language but it eases thirst.

Topics: Ease, Language, Thirst

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

Topics: Flower, Language, Afterthought

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

Topics: Writing

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

Topics: Writing, Important, About Yourself

... 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.

Topics: Believe, Clouds, Sky, Windy, Entitled

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

Topics: Believe, Stranger, Believe In God

If you don't hear His voice so let Him hear yours. When prayers go up blessings descend.

Topics: Prayer, Blessing, Voice

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

Topics: Perseverance, Men, Long

Politics isn't in my nature.

Topics: Politics

Nationality isn't soul ...

Topics: Soul

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

source: - Bernard Malamud (2014). “The Fixer”, p.173, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Giving, Misery, Blame

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.

Topics: Book, Ideas, Needs

No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.

source: - Bernard Malamud (2014). “The Fixer”, p.59, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Anger, Hot, Coal

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?

Topics: Stars, Adventure, Moon, Strange World

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

Topics: Heart, Broken

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

Topics: Funny Marriage, Return, Fantasy

We didn't starve, but we didn't eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was

Topics: Sick, Poverty, Chickens

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.

Topics: Men, Justice, Doe

Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.

Topics: Happiness, Space, Plus

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.

Topics: Time, Past, Clay

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.

Topics: Real, Track, Way

Where to look if you've lost your mind?

Topics: Mind, Looks, Lost, Lost Your Mind

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.

Topics: Lonely, Stars, Loneliness, Easy Way

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.

Topics: Cutting, Circles, Experts, Cutting Corners

You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

Topics: Men, Surprise, Pity

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

source: - Bernard Malamud (2004). “The Fixer: A Novel”, p.333, Macmillan

Topics: Suffering, Taught, Uselessness

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

Topics: Eye, Spectators, Critical

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

Topics: Book, Fixers

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

Topics: Language, Civilized

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

Topics: People, Accomplishment, Littles

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.

Topics: Writing, Sitting Down, Down And

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.

source: - Bernard Malamud (2014). “The Fixer”, p.14, Atlantic Books Ltd

Topics: Dream

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

Topics: Forget You, Forget, Jew

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

Topics: Giving, Charity

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.

Topics: Hurt, Forever, Obstacles

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

Topics: Purpose

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.

Topics: Life, Book, Spoons

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

source: - Bernard Malamud, Thomas Mallon (2003). “Dubin's Lives: A Novel”, p.87, Macmillan

Topics: Track, Train

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

Topics: Men, Jew

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

Topics: Yelling, Done, Want

When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.

Topics: Hurt, Feels

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

Topics: Live Life, Two, Suffering

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

source: - "The Natural: A Novel".

Topics: Live Life, Two, Suffering, Two Lives

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.

source: - Bernard Malamud (1989). “The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction”, p.10, Macmillan

Topics: Book, Writing, Three

A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.

source: - Bernard Malamud, Lawrence M. Lasher (1991). “Conversations with Bernard Malamud”, p.34, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Topics: Reading, Surprise, Worth Reading

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.

source: - "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life". The New York Times, March 20, 1988.

Topics: Writing, Ideas, Reform

Nationality isn't soul.

source: - Bernard Malamud (1973). “Rembrandt's Hat”, p.61, Macmillan

Topics: Soul, Nationality

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.

Topics: People, Style, Stories

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.

source: - "The Fixer". Book by Bernard Malamud, Part Five, 1966.

Topics: Order, Giving, Confusion

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

source: - "A Malamud reader".

Topics: Sick, Poverty, Poor

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.

source: - Bernard Malamud, Lawrence M. Lasher (1991). “Conversations with Bernard Malamud”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Topics: Writing, Character, Discipline, Matisse

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

source: - Bernard Malamud (1984). “The Stories of Bernard Malamud”

Topics: Self, Stories, Pages