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Bernard Malamud

16 quotes

“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.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Natural (1952), p. 152
“Without heroes, we're all plain people, and don't know how far we can go.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Natural (1952) p. 154
“I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Natural (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) p. 149. (originally published 1952)
“Levin wanted friendship and got friendliness; he wanted steak and they offered spam.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A New Life (1961; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) p. 111
“If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Black is My Favorite Color", in Idiots First (1963), p. 29
“Mourning is a hard business," Cesare said. "If people knew there'd be less death.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Life is Better than Death", in Idiots First (1963), p. 85
“… keep in mind that the purpose of freedom is to create it for others.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Fixer (1966) p. 286
“There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to – if there are no doors or windows – he walks through a wall.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Man in the Drawer", in Rembrandt's Hat (1973); cited from Selected Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) p. 225
“I think I said "All men are Jews except they don'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.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Bernard Malamud", in Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (eds.) Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Prentice-Hall, 1975) p. 11
“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 (1914–1986) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dubin's Lives (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979) p. 27
“If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dubin's Lives (reprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) p. 87; (originally published: 1979)
“Those who write about life, reflect about life…. you see in others who you are.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dubin's Lives (1979)
“Life is a tragedy full of joy.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The New York Times (21 January 1979)
“It was all those biographies in me yelling, “We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how Dubin’s Lives resulted from a lifetime of reading biographies, W Magazine (16 February 1979)
“If I may, I would at this point urge young writers not to be too much concerned with the vagaries of the marketplace. Not everyone can make a first-rate living as a writer, but a writer who is serious and responsible about his work, and life, will probably find a way to earn a decent living, if he or she writes well. A good writer will be strengthened by his good writing at a time, let us say, of the resurgence of ignorance in our culture. I think I have been saying that the writer must never compromise with what is best in him in a world defined as free.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address at Bennington College (30 October 1984) as published in "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life" in The New York Times (20 March 1988); also in Talking Horse : Bernard Malamud on Life and Work (1996) edi…
“I have written almost all my life. My writing has drawn, out of a reluctant soul, a measure of astonishment at the nature of life. And the more I wrote well, the better I felt I had to write. In writing I had to say what had happened to me, yet present it as though it had been magically revealed. I began to write seriously when I had taught myself the discipline necessary to achieve what I wanted. When I touched that time, my words announced themselves to me. I have given my life to writing without regret, except when I consider what in my work I might have done better. I wanted my writing to be as good as it must be, and on the whole I think it is. I would write a book, or a short story, 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. 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 re-form it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing: The men and things of today are wont to lie fairer and truer in tomorrow's meadow, Henry Thoreau said. I don't regret the years I put into my work. Perhaps I regret the fact that I was not two men, one who could live a full life apart from writing; and one who lived in art, exploring all he had to experience and know how to make his work right; yet not regretting that he had put his life into the art of perfecting the work.”
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address at Bennington College (30 October 1984) as published in "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life" in The New York Times (20 March 1988)