Bernard Malamud Quotes

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.

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

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

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

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

You see in others who you are.

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

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

(Clothes) cannot change a man's nature. He's either kind or he isn't, with or without clothes.

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

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.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

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

... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.

A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

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

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

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.