Bernard Malamud
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.
If you ever forget you're a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
We have two lives the one we learn with and the life we live after that.
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.Collection: Live Life
Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.Collection: Writing
If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.Collection: Track
The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.Collection: Purpose
You see in others who you are.Collection: Identity
What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.Collection: Suffering
For misery don't blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.Collection: Giving
I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.Collection: Giving Up
There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.Collection: Book
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal courseCollection: Steps
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.Collection: Anger
... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.Collection: Loneliness
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.Collection: Book
All men are Jews, though few men know it.Collection: Men
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.Collection: Reading
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.Collection: Stories
A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.Collection: Men
In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.Collection: Dream
The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.Collection: Writing
Charity you can give even when you haven't got.Collection: Giving
The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.Collection: Past
It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'Collection: Yelling
You can't eat language but it eases thirst.Collection: Ease
Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Lonely
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.Collection: Writing
Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.Collection: Writing
Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.Collection: Wine
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.Collection: Book
One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.Collection: Funny Marriage
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.Collection: Life
You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Cutting
Politics isn't in my nature.Collection: Politics
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.Collection: Book
When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Writing
Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.Collection: Life
I fix what's broken - except in the heart.Collection: Heart