“Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.”

“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

“Where to look if you've lost your mind?”
― Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

“We have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Natural

“Without heroes we're all plain people and don't know how far we can go.”
― Bernard Malamud

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself."

(Interview, New York Post Magazine, September 14, 1958)”
― Bernard Malamud

“What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.”
― Bernard Malamud

“Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.”
― Bernard Malamud

“There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

“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.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel

“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”
― Bernard Malamud

“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.”
― Bernard Malamud

“The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course”
― 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, Dubin's Lives

“You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

“I fix what's broken - except in the heart.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

“When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Assistant

“A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.”
― Bernard Malamud

“We have two lives; the life we learn with and the life we live after that.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Natural

“Would you say you have a "philosophy" Of your own? If so what is it?'
'If I have it's all skin and bones...If I have any philosophy...it's that life could be better than it is.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

“His worst fault is he thinks his brains entitle him to certain privileges.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Assistant

“Without heroes we are all plain people and don't know how far it is we can go.”
― Bernard Malamud

“We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

“First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge & enhance an idea, to reform it . . . Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.”
― Bernard Malamud

“Nobody lived in Eden anymore.”
― Bernard Malamud

“Charity you can give even when you haven't got.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

“But she had recently come to think that in such unhappy times--when the odds were so high against personal happiness--to find love was miraculous, and to fulfill it as best two people could was what really mattered.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Assistant

“She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes--clearly her father's--were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust.”
― Bernard Malamud

“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. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, 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, The Fixer

“He remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had had - a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved (which did not bleed him like his later loneliness), and he wished he could have lived longer in his boyhood. This was an old thought with him.”
― Bernard Malamud, The Natural