What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.
Cynthia OzickWe were born to die; we were born to endure, on the way to death, sorrow-sorrow in manifold shapes.
Cynthia OzickWhat was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share ofthe Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.
Cynthia OzickOne must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.
Cynthia Ozick