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literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.

Cynthia Ozick

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Cynthia Ozick
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: April 17
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Summary
Instrument
Instruments
Literature
Culture

More quotes by Cynthia Ozick

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In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.
Cynthia Ozick
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Traveling is seeing it is the implicit that we travel by.
Cynthia Ozick
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Time heals all things but one: Time.
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
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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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In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing.
Cynthia Ozick
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I can't claim to be disenchanted with the current state of fiction because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.
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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He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.
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.
Cynthia Ozick
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There's a paradox in rereading. You read the first time for rediscovery: an encounter with the confirming emotions. But you reread for discovery: you go to the known to figure out the workings of the unknown, the why of the familiar how.
Cynthia Ozick
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Awe consumes any brand that ignites it.
Cynthia Ozick
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very bright teeth as big and orderly as piano keys.
Cynthia Ozick
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The butterfly lures us not only because he is beautiful, but because he is transitory. The caterpillar is uglier, but in him we can regard the better joy of becoming.
Cynthia Ozick
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One reason writers write is out of revenge.
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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The trouble with happiness is that it never notices itself.
Cynthia Ozick
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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.
Cynthia Ozick
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Death persecutes before it executes.
Cynthia Ozick
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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