189 Quotes by Cynthia Ozick

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.

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.

You can never tell how genes ricochet.

What we remember from childhood we remember forever – permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn’t matter.

The imagination has resources and intimations we don’t even know about.

By replacing history with fantasy, the Palestinians have invented a society unlike any other, where hatred trumps bread. They have reared children unlike any other children, removed from ordinary norms and behaviors.

I write in terror... I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes every syllable.

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.