Bernard Malamud Quotes - Page 2

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Writing, Important, About Yourself

  15 Copy quote

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Writing, Ifs

  Bernard Malamud, Thomas Mallon (2003). “Dubin's Lives: A Novel”, p.105, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.

  Bernard Malamud

  Dream

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

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Real, Track, Cracks

  Bernard Malamud, Lawrence M. Lasher (1991). “Conversations with Bernard Malamud”, p.58, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Eye, Alaska, Spectators

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Men, Justice, Diversity

  Bernard Malamud, Thomas Mallon (2003). “Dubin's Lives: A Novel”, p.275, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Giving, Charity, Havens

  Bernard Malamud (1967). “A Malamud Reader”, p.76, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Past, Experience, Clay

  'Dubin's Lives' (1979) p. 20

  8 Copy quote

• ... 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Believe, Clouds, Sky

  Bernard Malamud (2014). “The Fixer”, p.42, Atlantic Books Ltd

  8 Copy quote

• 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?

  Bernard Malamud

  Stars, Adventure, Moon

  Bernard Malamud (2014). “The Fixer”, p.144, Atlantic Books Ltd

  6 Copy quote

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Forget You, Forget, Jew

  Bernard Malamud (1967). “A Malamud Reader”, p.544, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

  Bernard Malamud

  Baseball, Quality, Mythology

  17 Copy quote

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Change, Ears, World

  Bernard Malamud (1983). “The Stories of Bernard Malamud”, p.350, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Children, Back Love, Games

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

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Writing, Ideas, Reform

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

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Time, Past, Clay

  Dubin's Lives (1979) p. 20

  8 Copy quote

• I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

  Bernard Malamud

  Knowledge, Littles, Sometimes

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

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

  Bernard Malamud

  World, Stranger, Human Relations

  Bernard Malamud, Thomas Mallon (2003). “Dubin's Lives: A Novel”, p.27, Macmillan

  17 Copy quote

• Nationality isn't soul.

  Bernard Malamud

  Soul, Nationality

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  People, Style, Stories

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Cutting, Circles, Experts

  Bernard Malamud (1984). “The Stories of Bernard Malamud”

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Dark, Self, Mystical Experiences

  Bernard Malamud (2003). “The Natural: A Novel”, p.94, Macmillan

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• 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.

  Bernard Malamud

  Order, Giving, Confusion

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

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Perseverance, Men, Long

  Bernard Malamud (2014). “The Fixer”, p.110, Atlantic Books Ltd

  6 Copy quote

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

  Bernard Malamud

  Wine, Sadness, Tragedy

  1975 Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

  6 Copy quote

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