In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I measure my life in sentences pressed out, line by line, like the lustrous ooze on the underside of the snail, the… — 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.… — 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
“...this is very nice, cozy. You got a nice cozy place, Lublin." "Cramped," Rosa said. "I work from a different theory. For… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
“It seemed to Rosa Lublin that the whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
“No, no, sometimes a person feels to be alone." "If you're alone too much," Persky said, "you think too much." "Without a… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
Life is that which - pressingly, persistently, unfailingly, imperially - interrupts. — 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
My first encounter with James was when I was seventeen. My brother brought home from the public library a science fiction anthology,… — 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
