What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.
Cynthia OzickThe imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.
Cynthia OzickHe who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.
Cynthia OzickTo 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 OzickA 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