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
The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society's logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.
Cynthia Ozick
In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.
Cynthia Ozick
In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.
Cynthia Ozick
After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies. We get to be responsible for our faces.
Cynthia Ozick
I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called ''scientific'' mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.
Cynthia Ozick
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.