The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Cynthia Ozick

In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it’s the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.

Life, Work, Thought

Profound subject matter can be encompassed in small space – for proof, look at any sonnet by Shakespeare!

Small, Look, Profound

Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.

self, knowledge

When something does not insist on being noticed when we aren’t grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

Dedication to one’s work in the world is the only possible sanctifica-tion. Religion in all its forms is dedication to Someone Else’s work not yours.

After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies.

The engineering is secondary to the vision.

What we remember from childhood we remember forever-permanent ghosts stamped imprinted eternally seen.

helping, people

Lie, illusion, deception, she said–was that it truly, the universal language we all speak?

deception, humanity, language, lies

The novella will be called, I think, “The Messiah of Stockholm.” It takes place in Stockholm. I’d better say no more, or the Muse will wipe it out.

creativity-paris-review, writing, writing-process

It seemed to Rosa Lublin that the whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real life. Here they had nothing. They were all scarecrows, blown about under the murdering sunball with empty ribcages.

despair, ennui, florida, misery, regret, retirement

Get thee to the novel! – the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart’s maelstrom.

art, literature, the-novel