76+ Bernard Malamud Quotes On Religion, Education And America

Bernard Malamud was an American novelist and short story writer. He is best known for his novels The Natural and The Assistant, both of which were adapted into films. Malamud's writing often explored themes of Jewish identity, alienation, and assimilation into American life. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Bernard Malamud on religion, education, love.

Top 10 Bernard Malamud Quotes

1. Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.
2. 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.
3. Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
4. Life is a tragedy full of joy.
5. We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
6. I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
7. A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
8. The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.
9. If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
• We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: "It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
• If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
• We didn't starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
• What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
• The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
• The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.
• We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.
• ... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.
• Nationality isn't soul.

Bernard Malamud Quotes About Love

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish. — Bernard Malamud

... 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

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

Bernard Malamud Quotes About Life

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

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

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

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

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows. — Bernard Malamud

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

Bernard Malamud Quotes About Write

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

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. — Bernard Malamud

Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live. — Bernard Malamud

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. — Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it.... The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better. — Bernard Malamud

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

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know. — Bernard Malamud

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. — Bernard Malamud

A man has to construct, invent, his freedom. — Bernard Malamud

Politics isn't in my nature. — Bernard Malamud

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

You see in others who you are. — Bernard Malamud

How can we be strangers if we both believe in God? — Bernard Malamud

Charity you can give even when you haven't got. — Bernard Malamud

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. — Bernard Malamud

If you ever forget you're a Jew, a Gentile will remind you. — Bernard Malamud

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

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

First drafts are for learning what your story is about. — Bernard Malamud

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime — Bernard Malamud

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others. — Bernard Malamud

You can't eat language but it eases thirst. — Bernard Malamud

A man had to learn, it was his nature. — Bernard Malamud

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

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

All men are Jews, though few men know it. — Bernard Malamud

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. — Bernard Malamud

Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear. — Bernard Malamud

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams. — Bernard Malamud

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

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

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

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

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

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology. — Bernard Malamud

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. — Bernard Malamud

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

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

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. — Bernard Malamud

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

Where to look if you've lost your mind? — Bernard Malamud

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

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

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

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

Life Lessons by Bernard Malamud

1. Bernard Malamud's work emphasizes the importance of perseverance and resilience in the face of adversity, showing that even in the darkest of times, hope can be found.
2. He also explored themes of identity, morality, and redemption, demonstrating the power of the individual to make a difference in the world.
3. Malamud's stories often featured characters who were outsiders, highlighting the importance of empathy and understanding for those who are different from us.