What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the… — 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
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
I'm afraid that the act of writing is so scary and anxiety-filled that I never laugh at all. In fact, when people… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
People often ask how I can reject the phrase 'woman writer' and not reject the phrase 'Jewish writer' - a preposterous question.… — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
Novelists go about the strenuous business of marrying and burying their people, or else they send them to sea, or to Africa,… — 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
![“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.” quote by Cynthia Ozick](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/fc9/cynthia-ozick-2945_civilization_what-was-lost-in-the-european-cataclysm_217972.jpg)
