And if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer – he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.
BERNARD MALAMUDIt was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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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 -
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
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 -
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 are a Jew a goy will remind you.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
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 work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
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I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.
BERNARD MALAMUD