Bernard Malamud Quotes

44 Sourced Quotes

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

Bernard Malamud
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
What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bernard Malamud
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself.

Bernard Malamud
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.

Bernard Malamud