Bernard Malamud
All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.Collection: People
A man had to learn, it was his nature.Collection: Learning
The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetimeCollection: Self
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.Collection: Hurt
Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.Collection: Happiness
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?Collection: Stars
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.Collection: Baseball
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.Collection: Knowledge
Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.Collection: Children
How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?Collection: Believe
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.Collection: Two
We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.Collection: World
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.Collection: Time
If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.Collection: Forget You
Nationality isn't soul.Collection: Soul
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.Collection: Men
... 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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: People
(Clothes) cannot change a man's nature. He's either kind or he isn't, with or without clothes.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Dark
As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.Collection: Perseverance
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.Collection: Order
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.Collection: Men
We didn't starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.Collection: Sick
We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: "It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.Collection: Country
Where to look if you've lost your mind?Collection: Mind
If you don't hear His voice so let Him hear yours. When prayers go up blessings descend.Collection: Prayer