Cynthia Ozick

History ... isn't simply what has happened. It's a judgment on what has happened.

— Cynthia Ozick

The novelist's intuition for the sacred differs from the translator's interrogation of the sacred.

— Cynthia Ozick

Advances in technology neither impede nor augment literature.

— Cynthia Ozick

“The Germans are sentimental. Their word Heimweh . The English say homesick; the same in plain Swedish. Hemsjuk . Leave it to…

— Cynthia Ozick

To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces.…

— Cynthia Ozick

Imagine an American Hans Christian Andersen, conceive of the Brothers Grimm living in Missouri, and you will approximate Howard Schwartz, a fable-maker…

— Cynthia Ozick

literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.

— Cynthia Ozick

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

I don't agree with the sentiment 'write what you know.'... I think one should write what one doesn't know. The world is…

— Cynthia Ozick

An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is…

— Cynthia Ozick

There was a period... when I used to say, with as much ferocity as I could muster, 'I hate Henry James, and…

— Cynthia Ozick

Godlessness invariably produces vulgarity. Civilization is the product of belief.

— Cynthia Ozick

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…

— Cynthia Ozick

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

“We take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”

— Cynthia Ozick

Sometimes writing has to be forced. In starting out, the shape and timbre and texture of what is to come is an…

— Cynthia Ozick

A novel can be set in motion by an incident, a character, a location, a mood - by anything at all. Sometimes…

— Cynthia Ozick

Travelers are fantasists, conjurers, seers - and what they finally discover is that every round object everywhere is a crystal ball: stone,…

— Cynthia Ozick

“It seemed to Rosa Lublin that the whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real…

— Cynthia Ozick

I think it is serious to have good sales. As I learned belatedly, the more you sell, the more publishers pay attention…

— Cynthia Ozick

To listen acutely is to be powerless, even if you sit on a throne.

— Cynthia Ozick

I was so mad at my agent. I had polished and polished and polished [the play], and he referred to it as…

— Cynthia Ozick

What we think we are surely going to do, we don't do; and what we never intended to do, we may one…

— Cynthia Ozick

If ideas are what feed serious literature and arresting language, who today is writing a novel of ideas (which can often mean…

— Cynthia Ozick

It is true that money attracts; but much money repels.

— Cynthia Ozick