The trouble with happiness is that it never notices itself. Cynthia Ozick More Quotes by Cynthia Ozick More Quotes From Cynthia Ozick The secular Jew is a figment; when a Jew becomes a secular person he is no longer a Jew. Cynthia Ozick figments jew secular Language makes culture, and we make a rotten culture when we abuse words. Cynthia Ozick rotten abuse culture literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it. Cynthia Ozick instruments literature culture We have had, alas, and still have, the doubtful habit of reverence. Above all, we respect things as they are. Cynthia Ozick status-quo reverence habit 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. Cynthia Ozick illusion wind memories The ordinary is the divine. Cynthia Ozick divine ordinary Fiction does not invent out of a vacuum, but it invents; and what it invents is, first, the fabric and cadence of language, and then a slant of idea that sails out of these as a fin lifts from the sea. Cynthia Ozick vacuums sea ideas Resentment is a communicable disease and should be quarantined. Cynthia Ozick resentment disease should All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever. Cynthia Ozick political forever book 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. Cynthia Ozick balls eye stones In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it. Cynthia Ozick reading lying promise 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. Cynthia Ozick purpose ambition desire Life is that which - pressingly, persistently, unfailingly, imperially - interrupts. Cynthia Ozick life-is life One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival. Cynthia Ozick revenge hurt writing Wars, invented and organized by the highest available consciousnesses (do the worms go to war? do the fish? do the paramecia?), are the planet's chief source and cause of torment. Cynthia Ozick consciousness causes war Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey. Nothing shakes the heart so much as meeting-far, far away-what you last met at home. Cynthia Ozick home heart travel To listen acutely is to be powerless, even if you sit on a throne. Cynthia Ozick thrones ifs listening In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing. Cynthia Ozick divorced real wish Comedy springs from the ludicrous; but the ludicrous is stuck in the muck of reality, resolutely hostile to what is impossible. Cynthia Ozick comedy spring reality Bohemia and all its works are vanished out of America; or, more exactly, bohemia has migrated to the middle class, and is alive and well in condo and suburb. Cynthia Ozick alive class america
