Novelist Bernard Malamud, born in Brooklyn, New York (1914). He grew up in Brooklyn in a household where both Yiddish and English were spoken. He wrote a few stories in college, but after he graduated he was too preoccupied with finding a job to start writing seriously. It was the middle of the Depression and he was struggling just to earn enough money to eat and pay the rent. He said, "I would dream of new suits."
In 1940, he got a job as a clerk in the U.S. Census Bureau. He spent mornings checking drainage ditch statistics, but as soon as that work was done he would crouch over his desk and write short stories on company time. Eventually, he got a few stories published in magazines and he got a job as a professor at Oregon State College.
It was while he was working there that he published his first novel, The Natural (1952), about a talented baseball player who is dragged down by his own desires and obsessions. He was inspired to write the novel after reading biographies of Babe Ruth and Bobby Feller. It was a huge success and he went on to publish many more novels.
Malamud said, "I ... write a book, or a short story, 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."
*The purpose of the writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
*Without heroes, we are all plain people, and don't know how far we can go.
*We have two lives—the one we learn with and the life we live after that.
*Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
*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 wall.
*Life is a tragedy full of joy."
*Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
*What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews"
*I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
*The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
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