Cynthia Ozick Quotes

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.'

I really like questions. I like people who write scripts because they're asking questions, not because they're giving answers. It's something that I look for.

I don't think you can approach any piece of art with boundaries or rules. I think respect is a very important thing, but I also think what we discover along the way is really important.

One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.

Most writers are drawn to what is unknown, rather than what is clear in any tale.

I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.

I write for the same reason I read: to find out what's going to happen.

For me, one of the privileges of being a writer is to poke your nose around and learn about worlds you don't know.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

Nothing much interested me other than playing with language and telling stories and doing something with the wonders of the world around me.

If you don't travel the world and see as much of it as you can - see different characters in different situations - then how are you going to learn? I figured the best way to do that was to explore as much as I could.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

As long as there are things to wonder about, there are stories to be written about them. That makes me happy, because writing about things seems to be my thing.

The day you stop learning and creating must be the most boring day.

I write what I don't know. It's way more interesting.

Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science.

All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

I'm driven to go out and find new things to write about.

People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.