Cynthia Ozick

I read in order to find out what I need to know: To illuminate the riddle.
-Cynthia Ozick, Paris Review

One 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, Paris Review

Stories are splinters of larger ideas about culture.
-Cynthia Ozick, Paris Review

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