Bernard Malamud

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

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

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.

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

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.

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

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

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.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

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.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

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