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
distance ruins saws
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, psychologically, in the grip of its recent atrocities.
It is true that money attracts; but much money repels.
past civilization people
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.
christian brother caves
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 seduced by the uncanny and the unearthly. In Lilith's Cave, he once again reaches into a magical cornucopia of folklore and fantasy and spreads before us, in enchanting language, the marvels and shocks of dybbuks, ghosts, demons, spirits, and wizards.
taken ideas soul
We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection to anything at all is taken as a full-scale revolution. Should any soul speak up in favor of the obvious, it is taken as a symptom of the influence of the left, the right, the pink, the black, the dangerous. An idea for its own sake - especially an obvious idea - has no respectability.
time two first-impression
Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.
native-american paradise
Paradise is only for those who have already been there.
ordinary divine
The ordinary is the divine.
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.
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.
time heal all-things
Time heals all things but one: Time.
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.
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.
thinking one-day done
What we think we are surely going to do, we don't do; and what we never intended to do, we may one day notice that we have done, and done, and done.