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The secular Jew is a figment when a Jew becomes a secular person he is no longer a Jew.

Cynthia Ozick

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Cynthia Ozick
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: April 17
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Becomes
Persons
Person
Figment
Figments
Secular
Jew
Longer

More quotes by Cynthia Ozick

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Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.
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To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.
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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.
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The trouble with happiness is that it never notices itself.
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Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.
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In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: its the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.
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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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I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.
Cynthia Ozick
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Awe consumes any brand that ignites it.
Cynthia Ozick
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Paradise is only for those who have already been there.
Cynthia Ozick
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The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.
Cynthia Ozick
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Death persecutes before it executes.
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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The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.
Cynthia Ozick
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Time heals all things but one: Time.
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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We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
Cynthia Ozick
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One reason writers write is out of revenge.
Cynthia Ozick
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I was so mad at my agent. I had polished and polished and polished [the play], and he referred to it as a draft. I wrote him a bitter letter: How can you call this a draft? I don't do drafts! By now I've done 18, and its turning, in the rehearsal room, into a 19th.
Cynthia Ozick
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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