143 Quotes by Bernard Malamud

We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.

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

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.

I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime.

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.

Being born a Jew meant being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors. Accident and history had involved Yakov Bok as he had never dreamed he could be involved. The involvement was, in a way of speaking, impersonal, but the effect, his misery and suffering, were not. The suffering was personal, painful, and possibly endless.

In a sick country every step to health is an insult to those who live on its sickness.