Of comic novels that have quaffed the elixir of 'classic': Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I never conceived of not writing a novel. I believed - oh, God, I believed, it was an article of faith! -… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: its the next work, still to be written, that… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I am proudest of that first novel, 'Trust,' of anything I have written. I don't think I've had such intense energy since. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I have lost stories and many starts of novels before. Not always as punishment for 'telling,' but more often as a result… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
There's a paradox in rereading. You read the first time for rediscovery: an encounter with the confirming emotions. But you reread for… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
The novel at its nineteenth-century pinnacle was a Judaized novel: George Eliot and Dickens and Tolstoy were all touched by the Jewish… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
If ideas are what feed serious literature and arresting language, who today is writing a novel of ideas (which can often mean… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I don't like to read contemporary fiction while writing - I need a sense of isolation, a kind of silence, and I… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
A novel can be set in motion by an incident, a character, a location, a mood - by anything at all. Sometimes… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
A writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, silhouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I think a fictional invention grows according to its own development, not the author's. Characters in fiction are not simply as alive… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
Novels are routinely denigrated when characters are not found to be likable. Is Raskolnikov likable? Is King Lear? The plethora of such… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
It's true that the young who now flock to script writing, or producing and directing, to fulfill the demands of these new… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it's the next work, still to be written, that… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
If I've ever regretted anything, it was putting all my eggs in one basket, holing up and kneeling at the altar of… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
History ... isn't simply what has happened. It's a judgment on what has happened. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
The novelist's intuition for the sacred differs from the translator's interrogation of the sacred. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
“The Germans are sentimental. Their word Heimweh . The English say homesick; the same in plain Swedish. Hemsjuk . Leave it to the Germans… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces. Who squanders… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
Imagine an American Hans Christian Andersen, conceive of the Brothers Grimm living in Missouri, and you will approximate Howard Schwartz, a fable-maker and fable-gatherer… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I think a fictional invention grows according to its own development, not the author's. Characters in fiction are not simply as alive as you… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I don't agree with the sentiment 'write what you know.'... I think one should write what one doesn't know. The world is bigger and… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion,… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
There was a period... when I used to say, with as much ferocity as I could muster, 'I hate Henry James, and I wish… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
Godlessness invariably produces vulgarity. Civilization is the product of belief. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
