black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Bernard Malamud

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

Courage Inspirational Inspiring
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Illusion Joy Life Loss
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stations Track Train
As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Long Men Perseverance
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Baseball Mythology Quality
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?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Adventure Moon Stars
Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Happiness Plus Space
If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Few Forget Jokes Remind
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

Ideas Reform Revision Work Writing
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst
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

Clay Past Recapture Time
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Metaphor Sometimes Two

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Malamud Quotes