Bernard Malamud Quotes

I've played real people before, but I never knew them.

In my opinion when you speak about relationships between people, you are actually talking about everything in their world because everything is contained in that relationship.

I think the hardest thing about my life is that I've met so many people all over the world who I love, but they're not friends with each other.

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

I stand at a distance, like a person who comes from another world.

Relationships can be about yourself, they can be about you and your god, you and your people, you and your family. It can be about a lot of different stuff. And it is.

Welcome to New York, where everybody's a stranger, and nobody is.

Other people may complicate our lives, but life without them would be unbearably desolate. None of us can be truly human in isolation. The qualities that make us human emerge only in the ways we relate to other people.

People may live as much retired from the world as they please; but sooner or later, before they are aware, they will find themselves debtor or creditor to somebody.

At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

Strangers are an endangered species.

We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others’ lives.

One would be in less danger From the wiles of the stranger If one's own kin and kith Were more fun to be with.

The thing that is always important to me is the relationships. I feel like until I get around with the actual people that I am going to be working with there is only so much that I can do.

How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?

For all of us, whether we walk old paths or blaze new trails, friends remain important.

There is always risk in relationships, but bottom line? The world has no meaning apart from relationships. Some are just messier than others, some are seasonal, others are difficult, and a few are easy, but every one of them is important.

You just have to decide how close you want them. Not every person in your life needs to be your best friend: some can be friends or just friendly acquaintances.

relationships. That's all there really is. There's your relationship with the dust that just blew in your face, or with the person who just kicked you end over end. ... You have to come to terms, to some kind of equilibrium, with those people around you, those people who care for you, your environment.

Women age more in company because they have more relationships. Men have buddies. They have acquaintances, they have comrades. Friends as women have, the friends that of the soul that you share everything, that you witness each other's lives, that you talk their, your, heart out, that you cry with, that you ask money when you need, that.

But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one. Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for.

Maturity is produced through relationships and community.

Now they were as strangers; nay worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.

They're sort of ancillary anyway, friends. I mean, they're important -- everybody knows that; the TV tells you so -- but they come and go. You lose one friend, you pick up another.

The more isolated and disconnected we are, the more shattered and distorted our self-identity. We are not healthy when we are alone. We find ourselves when we connect to others. Without community we don't know who we are... When we live outside of healthy community, we not only lose others. We lose ourselves...Who we understand ourselves to be is dramatically affected for better or worse by those we hold closest to us.