Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Cynthia Ozick
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: April 17
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
History
Claim
Littles
Mostly
States
Currents
Little
Claims
Fiction
State
Disenchanted
Reading
Drawn
Read
Current

More quotes by Cynthia Ozick

Image
The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
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
Image
The trouble with happiness is that it never notices itself.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
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.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
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
Image
We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
very bright teeth as big and orderly as piano keys.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
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
Image
We have had, alas, and still have, the doubtful habit of reverence. Above all, we respect things as they are.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
The ordinary is the divine.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, dont confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it.
Cynthia Ozick
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The engineering is secondary to the vision.
Cynthia Ozick