Address at Bennington College (30 October 1984) http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/reviews/malamud-reflections.html as published in "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life" in The New York Times (20 March 1988); also in Talking Horse : Bernard Malamud on Life and Work (1996) edited by Alan Cheuse and Nicholas Delbanco, p. 35
Context: If I may, I would at this point urge young writers not to be too much concerned with the vagaries of the marketplace. Not everyone can make a first-rate living as a writer, but a writer who is serious and responsible about his work, and life, will probably find a way to earn a decent living, if he or she writes well. A good writer will be strengthened by his good writing at a time, let us say, of the resurgence of ignorance in our culture. I think I have been saying that the writer must never compromise with what is best in him in a world defined as free.
Day of Affirmation Address (1966)
Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)
Context: When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.
September, 1967. Speech to PC convention, quoted in I Never Say Anything Provocative by Wente, Margaret. (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates Limited, 1975.)
“I know death comes. I’ve seen too much death, young death.”
Destiny’s daughter (2007)
“The urge to excel and the urge to lead aren’t the same. Sometimes I think they may be opposites.”
Source: Red Mars (1992), Chapter 2, “The Voyage Out” (p. 67)
Paris Review Interview (1990)
Context: I know when it’s the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it’s the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, No. No, I’m finished. Bye. And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.
Preface http://books.google.com/books?id=U_xaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+good+many+young+writers+make+the+mistake+of+enclosing+a+stamped+self-addressed+envelope+big+enough+for+the+manuscript+to+come+back+in+This+is+too+much+of+a+temptation+to+the+editor%22&pg=PAx#v=onepage to How to Write Short Stories (1924)
Source: remembered rapture: the writer at work
