Quotes from 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.

As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

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.

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

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?

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

A man had to learn, it was his nature.

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

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

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

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

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

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

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

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.