In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it. Cynthia Ozick More Quotes by Cynthia Ozick More Quotes From Cynthia Ozick 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 upintelligentliteraturetrying All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being. Cynthia Ozick human-beingbeinglikewriting I think that fanaticism is terrific. As long as you don't have to live with it. Oh, yes, nobody should marry a writer. Cynthia Ozick nobodythinkyoulong 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 nothinglanguageartistimagination The novelist's intuition for the sacred differs from the translator's interrogation of the sacred. Cynthia Ozick translatornovelistsacredintuition 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 neitherlanguagepoetrybible 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 spiritualbiblelongworld My first encounter with James was when I was seventeen. My brother brought home from the public library a science fiction anthology, which included 'The Beast in the Jungle.' It swept me away. I had a strange, somewhat uncanny feeling that it was the story of my life. Cynthia Ozick mehomelifescience I had the idea in my twenties that a writer could immediately become the late Henry James. Henry James himself had to mature. Even Saul Bellow did. Cynthia Ozick himselfbecomelatemature
