Quotes from The Natural

“We have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“We have two lives; the life we learn with and the life we live after that.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“He remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had had - a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved (which did not bleed him like his later loneliness), and he wished he could have lived longer in his boyhood. This was an old thought with him.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“His blood changed to falling snow.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere where it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground. The ball screamed toward the pitcher and seemed suddenly to dive down at his feet. He grabbed it to throw to first and realized to his horror that he held only the cover. The rest of it, unraveling cotton thread as it rode, was headed into the outfield.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground somebody then shouted it was raining cats and dogs. By the time of Roy got in from second he was wading in water ankle deep.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“Of course I was embarrassed but I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

“Experience makes good people better." She was staring at the lake. "How does it do that?" "Through their suffering." "I had enough of that," he said in disgust. "We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness All it taught me was to stay away from it. I am sick of all I have suffered." She shrank away a little.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Natural

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Popular quotes

“They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot.
I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them?
I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls.
I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor.
We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the patience not to strangle my mother-in-law, chop her into little pieces, and dump them down a sewer.”
― Jennifer Weiner, quote from Little Earthquakes

“Here the earth, as if to prove its immensity, empties itself. Gertrude Stein said: 'In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.' The uncluttered stretches of the American West and the deserted miles of roads force a lone traveler to pay attention to them by leaving him isolated in them. This squander of land substitutes a sense of self with a sense of place by giving him days of himself until, tiring of his own small compass, he looks for relief to the bigness outside -- a grandness that demands attention not just for its scope, but for its age, its diversity, its continual change. The isolating immensity reveals what lies covered in places noisier, busier, more filled up. For me, what I saw revealed was this (only this): a man nearly desperate because his significance had come to lie within his own narrow ambit.”
― William Least Heat-Moon, quote from Blue Highways

“Moćnicima je važnije sopstveno blagostanje nego dobrobit Carstva. A kako su sami oni slika Carstva za bilo koje neupućeno oko, ta činjenica se lako propušta."
"Kako to misliš?" - upita stariji čarobnjak.
"Kad pomisliš na Carstvo, šta zamišljaš? Istoriju armija koje ratuju po zemlji? Ili uspon Sabora? Možda se setiš vladarskih hronika. Šta god bilo, jedna najočiglednija istina se previđa. Carstvo čine svi oni koji žive unutar njegovih granica, od vlastelina do najnižih slugu, čak i robova koji obrađuju zemlju. Ono se mora posmatrati kao jedinstvena celina, i pogrešno je smatrati neki mali ali vidljiv deo, poput ratnog vođe ili Visokog saveta, njegovoim otelotvorenjem. Shvataš li to?”
― Raymond E. Feist, quote from Magician: Master

“It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn’t come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren’t ready, when you were just innocently flossing your teeth, for example, or eating a bowl of cereal. ”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Last Summer (of You and Me)

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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