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The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

Cynthia Ozick

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Cynthia Ozick
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: April 17
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Writer
Language
Seems
Power
Writing
Kind
Entitled

More quotes by Cynthia Ozick

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The ordinary is the divine.
Cynthia Ozick
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We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
Cynthia Ozick
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To be any sort of competent writer one must keep one's psychological distance from the supreme artists.
Cynthia Ozick
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Godlessness invariably produces vulgarity. Civilization is the product of belief.
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The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society's logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.
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History ... isn't simply what has happened. It's a judgment on what has happened.
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Dedication to one's work in the world is the only possible sanctifica-tion. Religion in all its forms is dedication to Someone Else's work, not yours.
Cynthia Ozick
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To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.
Cynthia Ozick
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Time at length becomes justice.
Cynthia Ozick
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Old saws have no teeth.
Cynthia Ozick
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One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts certain ideas and experiences hurt one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.
Cynthia Ozick
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Every writer aspires to recognition , and it comes entirely privately, without public fanfare, each time a piece of work is judged worthy of publication.
Cynthia Ozick
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very bright teeth as big and orderly as piano keys.
Cynthia Ozick
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It is the function of a liberal university not to give right answers, but to ask right questions.
Cynthia Ozick
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In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.
Cynthia Ozick
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Time heals all things but one: Time.
Cynthia Ozick
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Paradise is only for those who have already been there.
Cynthia Ozick
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What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share ofthe Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.
Cynthia Ozick
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Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.
Cynthia Ozick
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Bohemia and all its works are vanished out of America or, more exactly, bohemia has migrated to the middle class, and is alive and well in condo and suburb.
Cynthia Ozick