Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozickis an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 April 1928
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
advice teeth saws
Old saws have no teeth.
ambition desire purpose
To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces. Who squanders talent praises death.
lying reading promise
In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it.
travel going-away visitors
I would distinguish between a visitor and a pilgrim: both will come to a place and go away again, but a visitor arrives, a pilgrim is restored. A visitor passes through a place; the place passes through the pilgrim.
eye balls stones
Travelers are fantasists, conjurers, seers - and what they finally discover is that every round object everywhere is a crystal ball: stone, teapot, the marvelous globe of the human eye.
beautiful butterfly joy
The butterfly lures us not only because he is beautiful, but because he is transitory. The caterpillar is uglier, but in him we can regard the better joy of becoming.
ordinary divine
The ordinary is the divine.
discovery rereading firsts
There's a paradox in rereading. You read the first time for rediscovery: an encounter with the confirming emotions. But you reread for discovery: you go to the known to figure out the workings of the unknown, the why of the familiar how.
native-american paradise
Paradise is only for those who have already been there.
ambition writing order
One must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.
distance artist psychological
To be any sort of competent writer one must keep one's psychological distance from the supreme artists.
memories wind illusion
Invention despoils observations, insinuation invalidates memory. A stewpot of bad habits, all of it - so that imaginative writers wind up, by and large, a shifty crew, sunk in distortion, misrepresentation, illusion, imposture, fakery.
truth hate useless
It is useless either to hate or to love truth - but it should be noticed.
time heal all-things
Time heals all things but one: Time.