24 Cynthia Ozick Quotes for You to Enjoy

Cynthia Ozick

American Novelist

Born: Apr 17, 1928

Life Long Think Will Writing You

Related authors: Elie Wiesel Ernest Hemingway H. P. Lovecraft James Baldwin John Updike Leo Rosten Nathaniel Hawthorne Richard Bach

Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by. Cynthia Ozick

Travel Seeing Implicit Traveling

I have lost stories and many starts of novels before. Not always as punishment for 'telling,' but more often as a result of something having gone cold and dead because of a hiatus. Telling, you see, is the same as a hiatus. It means you're not doing it. Cynthia Ozick

You Result Lost Before Gone Starts Cold Hiatus Punishment Telling See Something Having More Dead Because Always Doing Same Often Stories Means Many Novels

Whoever utters 'Kafkaesque' has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka's devisings. If there is one imperative that ought to accompany any biographical or critical approach, it is that Kafka is not to be mistaken for the Kafkaesque. Cynthia Ozick

Impress Ought Approach Critical Neither Imperative Mistaken Felt Accompany Nor Any Kafka Whoever

Sometimes writing has to be forced. In starting out, the shape and timbre and texture of what is to come is an uncertain chimera shimmering from behind a veil. You must not wait, loiter, dilly-dally. You must force your way painfully through. Cynthia Ozick

You Writing Sometimes Wait Way Out Must Uncertain Through Shape Veil Come Force Forced Texture Behind Your Painfully Starting

To be a Jew is an act of the strenuous mind as it stands before the fakeries and lying seductions of the world, saying no and no again as they parade by in all their allure. And to be a writer is to plunge into the parade and become one of the delirious marchers. Cynthia Ozick

Saying World Mind Become Before Lying Parade Plunge Writer Allure Again Act Stands Jew Strenuous

After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies. Cynthia Ozick

Become Our Faces Years After Certain Biographies Number

I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be - not to have a 'career', but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer. Cynthia Ozick

Animal Unmistakable Born Writer Obvious Wanted Straightforward Use Career

The engineering is secondary to the vision. Cynthia Ozick

Vision Engineering Secondary

I read in order to write. I read out of obsession with writing. Cynthia Ozick

Writing Out Write Obsession Read Order

If I've ever regretted anything, it was putting all my eggs in one basket, holing up and kneeling at the altar of literature, instead of going out and at least reviewing, running around and trying to write for magazines. That would've been the intelligent thing to do, but I didn't, and that was because of fanaticism. Cynthia Ozick

Out Running Magazines Write Kneeling Instead Putting Altar Because Around Least Been Reviewing Up Intelligent Trying Eggs Going Anything Fanaticism Literature Regretted Ever Thing Basket

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something. 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 ordinary fabric and intent of language. Nothing is like 'The Hunger Artist.' Nothing is like 'The Metamorphosis.' Cynthia Ozick

Language Nothing Imagination Say Circumstance Hunger Fabric Admit Take Like Artist Intent Burned Ordinary Hole Modernism Even

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

Intuition Sacred Translator Novelist Differs Interrogation

The Hebrew Bible has long been the world's possession, and those who come to it by any means, through whatever language, are equals in ownership, and may not be denied the intimacy of their spiritual claim. Cynthia Ozick

I'm a fiction writer, and I do write essays, but I am not a poet. And I absolutely reject the phrase 'woman writer' as anti-feminist. I wrote an essay about this as far back as 1977, at the height of the neo-feminist movement. Cynthia Ozick

Woman Poet Back Phrase About Absolutely Write Writer Wrote Am Essay Essays Movement Fiction Fiction Writer Height Far Reject

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 prod, goad the imagination. Cynthia Ozick

You World Sentiment Think Imagination Our Complex More Small Write Know Subjective Selves Than Bigger Prod Should Agree Wider

A novel can be set in motion by an incident, a character, a location, a mood - by anything at all. Sometimes the stimulus can be an idea, which will rapidly clothe itself in character and incident. 'Foreign Bodies' came about through the contemplation of the contrast between post-second world war America and Europe. Cynthia Ozick

War Character World Sometimes Will Location Mood Rapidly About Through Idea Between Contemplation Foreign Motion Came Stimulus Itself Contrast America Anything Which Bodies Europe Incident Novel World War Set

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader. Cynthia Ozick

You Yourself Writing Will First Reading Every Classes Born Write Writer No-One Read Reader Self-Knowledge Inevitably Stimulate May Confine Fiction Fiction Writer Urge Teach Wide

With certain rapturous exceptions, literature is the moral life. Cynthia Ozick

Life Moral Exceptions Literature Certain

The novel at its nineteenth-century pinnacle was a Judaized novel: George Eliot and Dickens and Tolstoy were all touched by the Jewish covenant: they wrote of conduct and of the consequences of conduct: they were concerned with a society of will and commandment. Cynthia Ozick

Will Society Consequences Touched Wrote Concerned Covenant George Were Commandment Pinnacle Dickens Conduct Novel Tolstoy Jewish

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