Bernard Malamud

Quotes

1. ‘Yakov Ivanovitch,’ Zina said, pouring herself another glassful of wine which she at once drank down, ‘do you believe in romantic love? I ask because I think you guard yourself against it.’

   ‘Whether I do or don’t it doesn’t come easily to me.’

   ‘I heartily agree that it oughtn’t to come too easily,’ Zina said, ‘but it seems to me that those who are serious about life – perhaps too serious – are slow to respond to certain changes in the climate of feeling. What I mean to say, Yakov Ivanovitch, is that 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 untitled to good fortune.’

2. 

   After he had finished reading the document the fixer, in exhaustion, thought, there’s no getting rid of the blood any more. It’s stained every word of the indictment and can’t be washed out. When they try me it will be for the crucifixion.

3. 

   He tried desperately to put together a comprehensible sequence of events that had led inevitably from his departure from the shtetl to a prison cell in Kiev; but to think of all these strange and unexpected experiences as meaningfully caused by related events confused him.

4. 

   He could not foresee any future in the future.

5. 

   There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil. (Bibikov)

That’s all the quotes.

5 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more