Bernard Malamud quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Bernard Malamud on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

Life, despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by.

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

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

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

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

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

Where a boy runs he never forgets.

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

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

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.

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

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.

Where to look if you've lost your mind?

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.

His blood changed to falling snow.

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

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

Politics isn't in my nature.

A man had to learn, it was his nature.

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

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

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

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

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

Since I can't be a professional on account of lack of education I wouldn't mind being wealthy.

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

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

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.

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

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

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

We are all terribly alone no matter what people say.

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

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

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

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

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

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

You see in others who you are.

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.

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

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

His worst fault is he thinks his brains entitle him to certain privileges.

We have two lives the one we learn with and the life we live after that.

She is not for you. She is a wild one
wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi.

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.

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

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

Who invented my life?

Nobody lived in Eden anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

It was a strange thing about people- they could look the same but be different.

You can't eat language but it eases thirst.

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.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself.
(Interview, New York Post Magazine, September 14, 1958)

Write your heart out.

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

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

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

If you ever forget you're a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.

A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.

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

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

They say God appeared in history and used it for his purposes, but if that was so he had no pity for men.

A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.

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

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

INTERVIEWER:
What specific piece of advice would you give to young writers?

MALAMUD:
Write your heart out.

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

I'm an American, I'm a Jew, and I write for all men.