Quote

A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.

Bernard Malamud

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bernard Malamud
Age: 71 †
Born: 1914
Born: April 26
Died: 1986
Died: March 18
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Surprise
Worth
Writer
Reading

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

Image
A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
Bernard Malamud
Image
Politics isn't in my nature.
Bernard Malamud
Image
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
Bernard Malamud
Image
... 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
Image
There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
Bernard Malamud
Image
There is in the darkness a unity, if you will, that cannot be achieved in any other environment, a blending of self with what the self perceives, and exquisite mystical experience.
Bernard Malamud
Image
One's fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.
Bernard Malamud
Image
We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.
Bernard Malamud
Image
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.
Bernard Malamud
Image
I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.
Bernard Malamud
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I fix what's broken - except in the heart.
Bernard Malamud
Image
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
Bernard Malamud
Image
Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.
Bernard Malamud
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.
Bernard Malamud
Image
We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is most of us have to be strangers.
Bernard Malamud