You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.
BERNARD MALAMUDWithout heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
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We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.
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In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.
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Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
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When I don’t feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
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As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
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You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.
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I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.
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The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
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Nationality isn’t soul.
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If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.
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(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
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I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
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The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
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You see in others who you are.
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… 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








