“ 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, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educatio… Cynthia Ozick
“ Profound subject matter can be encompassed in small space - for proof, look at any sonnet by Shakespeare! 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 bigger and wider and more complex than our small subjective selves. One should p… Cynthia Ozick
“ To say that such-and-such a circumstance is 'Kafkaesque' is to admit to the denigration of an imagination that has burned a hole in what we take to be modernism - even in what we take to be the ordina… Cynthia Ozick
“ In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it's the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance. Cynthia Ozick
“ When something does not insist on being noticed when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratit… Cynthia Ozick
“ A writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, silhouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the mud, uncles' and cousins' books, tablets and capsules and powders… Cynthia Ozick
“ In 1952, I had gone to England on a literary pilgrimage, but what I also saw, even at that distance from the blitz, were bombed-out ruins and an enervated society, while the continent was still, psych… Cynthia Ozick
“ Hebrew as a contemporary language, especially for poetry, is no longer the language of the Bible; but neither is it not the language of the Bible. Cynthia Ozick
“ What we remember from childhood we remember forever-permanent ghosts stamped imprinted eternally seen. 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 work not yours. Cynthia Ozick
“ Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom. Cynthia Ozick
“ It had always been my habit-- privately I felt it to be an ecstasy-- to enter, as into a mysterious vault, any public library. I was drawn to books that had been read before, novels that girls like my… Cynthia Ozick
“ The novella will be called, I think, “The Messiah of Stockholm.” It takes place in Stockholm. I’d better say no more, or the Muse will wipe it out. Cynthia Ozick
“ It seemed to Rosa Lublin that the whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real life. Here they had nothing. They were all scarecrows, blown about under the… Cynthia Ozick
