To listen acutely is to be powerless, even if you sit on a throne. Cynthia Ozick More Quotes by Cynthia Ozick More Quotes From Cynthia Ozick It is the function of a liberal university not to give right answers, but to ask right questions. Cynthia Ozick diversityjusticegiving Why do men carry guns and build prison camps, when the nurturing earth is made for freedom? Cynthia Ozick freedomgunmen 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...and then one day you find yourself leaning here, writing on that round glass table salvaged from the Park View Pharmacy--writing this, an impossibility, a summary of who you came to be where you are now, and where, God knows, is that? Cynthia Ozick cousinunclesbook The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters. Cynthia Ozick writingcharacterart The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery. Cynthia Ozick formimaginationdiscovery I measure my life in sentences pressed out, line by line, like the lustrous ooze on the underside of the snail, the snail's secret open seam, its wound, leaking attar. Cynthia Ozick linessecretwriting The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society's logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap. Cynthia Ozick logicmadnesslasts Women who write with an overriding consciousness that they write as women are engaged not in aspiration toward writing, but chiefly in a politics of sex. Cynthia Ozick womenwritingsex Time at length becomes justice. Cynthia Ozick lengthjusticetime We were born to die; we were born to endure, on the way to death, sorrow-sorrow in manifold shapes. Cynthia Ozick shapessorrowway In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better. Cynthia Ozick yellingwomencommunication 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. Cynthia Ozick encountersdiscoveryfirsts 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. Cynthia Ozick one-daydonethinking Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression. Cynthia Ozick first-impressiontimetwo 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. Cynthia Ozick takensoulideas History ... isn't simply what has happened. It's a judgment on what has happened. Cynthia Ozick judgmenthappenedhistory Death persecutes before it executes. Cynthia Ozick death Whoever mourns the dead mourns himself. Cynthia Ozick mourngriefdeath Godlessness invariably produces vulgarity. Civilization is the product of belief. Cynthia Ozick producebeliefcivilization a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it. Cynthia Ozick literaturebookpeople
