Cynthia Ozick Quotes
Sometimes writing has to be forced. In starting out, the shape and timbre and texture of what is to come is an uncertain chimera shimmering from behind a veil. You must not wait, loiter, dilly-dally. You must force your way painfully through.
Quotes to Explore
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The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.
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'Skins' is about a group of teenagers in Bristol, and it's all about what they get up to and all the different things they do. I think it's a good show because it's come from a very real place, and there's a lot of young people involved in the writing.
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I guess I went into journalism to save the world. I always felt through writing that I wanted to rotate the world slightly.
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All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.
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I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
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I started submitting stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years before I sold anything. I don't make my living writing science fiction, so in that sense, I'm still not a pro.
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
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One of the pleasantest things about book writing is that sometimes it brings one in touch with old friends.
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I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.
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I can ask for a £25,000 advance, but then you spend a year writing the book, and £25,000 is a loan against sales, and you can easily spend five years earning out. So that's £25,000 for six years.
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As much as I enjoy traveling and playing on stage as an artist, I really find my true sense of purpose in a room writing a song.
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It takes me a long time to write, and I trust myself, so I write very sparsely, so when I do, I know it's good, you know what I mean? Rather than writing a whole bunch and having to sort out what's good and what's not.
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I am truly at my happiest not when I am writing an aria for an actor or making a grand political or social point. I am at my happiest when I've figured out a fun way for somebody to slip on a banana peel.
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There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.
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Arendt did have a certain snobbishness, though in some of her writing she expressed more democratic attitudes.
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By the time we enter this work world and we're breadwinners, we enter a world that's just cluttered with spam, fake, digital friends, partisan media, ingenious identity thieves, world-class Ponzi schemers - a deception epidemic.
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For me, writing is such an escape, and I felt very lucky to have this to run away to.
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However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.
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I don't want to name any names, but I've worked on television shows where there's a guy writing for my generation who's, like, 60 - and it doesn't work.
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I have some great stories and I will get around to writing a book.
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So when I'm playing, I'm sort of painting a feeling in the air.
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The purest joy for the human spirit and the sheerest delight for man's heart are the rapture of the spirit contained within the love of God.
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The real fear isn't rejection, but that there won't be enough time in your life to write all the stories that you have in you.
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Sometimes writing has to be forced. In starting out, the shape and timbre and texture of what is to come is an uncertain chimera shimmering from behind a veil. You must not wait, loiter, dilly-dally. You must force your way painfully through.
