Quotes from Bernard Malamud

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

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

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

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 one we learn with and the life we live after that.

We didn't starve, but we didn't eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was.

There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction. What does that tell you about the nature of life, and does one really want to know?

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.

Where to look if you've lost your mind?

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

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

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

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

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

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.

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

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

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

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.

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.

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

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

We have two lives; the life we learn with and the life we live after that.