black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

Bernard Malamud

It was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’
BERNARD MALAMUD

Biography Done Want Yelling
(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clothes Kind Men
There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

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

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

Courage Inspirational Inspiring
We can’t all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Human Relations Stranger World
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

Insects Loneliness Lonely Matter Men Stars
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Knowledge Littles Sometime
If your train’s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stations Track Train
When I don’t feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Bury Feels Hope Hurt
I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Afterthought Flower Language
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Follow Joy Life Your Heart
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
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

Diversity Justice Know Learn Men
Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Pleasure Revision Writing
The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Freedom Others Purpose
One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Fantasy Funn Marriage Return
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.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Men Tattoo Walk Wall Window
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 MALAMUD

Diminishing Humanity Small Some Withdraw
First drafts are for learning what your story is about.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Draft Firsts Learn Stories
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing
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
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Sadness Tragedy Wine
Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Back Children Games Love
… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Believe Cloud Sky
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD

Looks Lost Mind

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Malamud Quotes