Bernard Malamud

“Who invented my life?”

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

“Charity you can give even when you haven't got.”

“I fix what's broken - except in the heart.”

“In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.”

“He remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had had - a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved (which did not bleed him like his later loneliness), and he wished he could have lived longer in his boyhood. This was an old thought with him.”

“Without heroes we are all plain people and don't know how far it is we can go.”

“First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge & enhance an idea, to reform it . . . Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.”

“There comes a time in a (wo)man's life when to get where (s)he has to -- 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 after that.”

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

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

“Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground somebody then shouted it was raining cats and dogs. By the time of Roy got in from second he was wading in water ankle deep.”

“But she had recently come to think that in such unhappy times--when the odds were so high against personal happiness--to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best two people could was what really mattered.”

“Life, despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself."(Interview, New York Post Magazine, September 14, 1958)”

“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.”

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

“Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.”

“She had recently come to think that in such unhappy times-when the odds were so high against personal happiness-to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best as two people could was what really mattered. Was it more important to insist a man's religious beliefs be exactly hers, or that the two of them have in common ideals, a desire to keep love in their lives, and to preserve in every possible way what was best in themselves? The less difference among people, the better; thus she settled it for herself yet was dissatisfied for those for whom she hadn't settled it,”

“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.”

“Nobody lived in Eden anymore.”

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

“Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth--spring flowers, yet age--a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange. He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as he might he could not place her although he could almost recall her name, as he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this couldn't be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty--no, though her face was attractive enough; it was that something about her moved him. Feature for feature, even some of the ladies of the photographs could do better; but she lapsed forth to this heart--had lived, or wanted to--more than just wanted, perhaps regretted how she had lived--had somehow deeply suffered: it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired. His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had finished drinking, again with excitement he examined the face and found it good: good for Leo Finkle. Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking. She might, perhaps, love him. How she had happened to be among the discards in Salzman's barrel he could never guess, but he knew he must urgently go find her.”

“Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and exalted him.”

“She is not for you. She is a wild one--wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi".”

“She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes--clearly her father's--were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust.”

“His worst fault is he thinks his brains entitle him to certain privileges.”

“When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.”

“Where to look if you've lost your mind?”

“What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.”

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

“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”