Bernard Malamud Quotes

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

A meshummed gives up one God for another. I don't want either. We live in a world where the clock ticks fast while he's on his timeless mountain staring in space. He doesn't see us and he doesn't care. Today I want my piece of bread, not in Paradise.

A man had to learn, it was his nature.

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

Where a boy runs he never forgets.

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

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

will you please explain how you can cry for a dead dog yet belong to a society of fanatics that urges death on human beings who happen to be Jews? Explain to me the logic of it.

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.

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.

At thirty-three the Whammer still enjoyed exceptional eyesight. He saw the ball spin off Roy's fingertips and it reminded him of a white pigeon he had kept as a boy, that he would send into flight by flipping it into the air. The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and white flapping wings, until it suddenly disappeared from view. He heard a noise like the bang of a firecracker at his feet and Sam had the ball in his mitt. Unable to believe his ears he heard Mercy intone a reluctant strike.

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

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.

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

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

Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and exalted him.

Nobody lived in Eden anymore.

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

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.

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

But she had recently come to think that in such unhappy times
when the odds were so high against personal happiness
to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best two people could was what really mattered.

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

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

His blood changed to falling snow.

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.

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

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

MALAMUD:
Write your heart out.

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.

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.

Who invented my life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes
clearly her father's
were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust.

Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth--spring flowers, yet age--a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange. He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as he might he could not place her although he could almost recall her name, as he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this couldn't be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty--no, though her face was attractive enough; it was that something about her moved him. Feature for feature, even some of the ladies of the photographs could do better; but she lapsed forth to this heart--had lived, or wanted to--more than just wanted, perhaps regretted how she had lived--had somehow deeply suffered: it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired. His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had finished drinking, again with excitement he examined the face and found

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Where to look if you've lost your mind?

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

You can't eat language but it eases thirst.

She had recently come to think that in such unhappy times-when the odds were so high against personal happiness-to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best as two people could was what really mattered. Was it more important to insist a man's religious beliefs be exactly hers, or that the two of them have in common ideals, a desire to keep love in their lives, and to preserve in every possible way what was best in themselves? The less difference among people, the better; thus she settled it for herself yet was dissatisfied for those for whom she hadn't settled it,

Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground somebody then shouted it was raining cats and dogs. By the time of Roy got in from second he was wading in water ankle deep.

In a sick country every step to health is an insult to those who live on its sickness.

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

Experience makes good people better." She was staring at the lake. "How does it do that?" "Through their suffering." "I had enough of that," he said in disgust. "We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness All it taught me was to stay away from it. I am sick of all I have suffered." She shrank away a little.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

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

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.