Cynthia Ozick
» Faces » “After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies. We get to be responsible for our faces.”
» Facts » “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.”
» Madness » “The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society’s logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.”
» Obvious » “In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.”
» Writers and Writing » “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.”
