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

More quotes by 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.
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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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Godlessness invariably produces vulgarity. Civilization is the product of belief.
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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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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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To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.
Cynthia Ozick
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... woman is frequently praised as the more creative sex. She does not need to make poems, it is argued she has no drive to make poems, because she is privileged to make babies. A pregnancy is as fulfilling as, say, Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium.... To call a child a poem may be a pretty metaphor, but it is a slur on the labor of art.
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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.
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In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing.
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Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.
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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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very bright teeth as big and orderly as piano keys.
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Awe consumes any brand that ignites it.
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The engineering is secondary to the vision.
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Traveling is seeing it is the implicit that we travel by.
Cynthia Ozick
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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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Fiction does not invent out of a vacuum, but it invents and what it invents is, first, the fabric and cadence of language, and then a slant of idea that sails out of these as a fin lifts from the sea.
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In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.
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Paradise is only for those who have already been there.
Cynthia Ozick
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Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.
Cynthia Ozick