Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful. — Cynthia Ozick Copy Share Image
What's impossible not to notice, though - it's all around us - is the diminution of American prose: How pedestrian it has become. Pick up any short story and listen to its voice, the tedious easy vernacular that mistakes transcription… — 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
