Quote

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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Cynthia Ozick
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: April 17
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Becoming
Lures
Joy
Uglier
Beautiful
Caterpillar
Better
Caterpillars
Transitory
Lure
Butterfly
Regard

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To be any sort of competent writer one must keep one's psychological distance from the supreme artists.
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In 1952, I had gone to England on a literary pilgrimage, but what I also saw, even at that distance from the blitz, were bombed-out ruins and an enervated society, while the continent was still, psychologically, in the grip of its recent atrocities.
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The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.
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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.
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Time heals all things but one: Time.
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The secular Jew is a figment when a Jew becomes a secular person he is no longer a Jew.
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We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
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Godlessness invariably produces vulgarity. Civilization is the product of belief.
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It is the function of a liberal university not to give right answers, but to ask right questions.
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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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History ... isn't simply what has happened. It's a judgment on what has happened.
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In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it.
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To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.
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Old saws have no teeth.
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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.
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Time at length becomes justice.
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The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.
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very bright teeth as big and orderly as piano keys.
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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.
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literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.
Cynthia Ozick