Cynthia Ozick Quotes

I have a longing for fiction, to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.

What is the difference between the novelist and the liar? At some moments, I have often wondered.

Just so you know, when they say "once upon a time"....they're lying. It's not once upon a time. Its not even twice upon a time. It's hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.

Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.

A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

As a child, I read a great many books in which animals and birds played significant roles, not only in the narrative itself, but also in creating the emotional and psychological atmosphere of that narrative - the imaginative furniture, as it were, in which any story unfolds.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

I like short stories.

Both types of books - fiction and nonfiction - are a search for story. As a writer and a reader, there's nothing I crave more than a good story!

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

Oh, mercy, I think we're all storytellers, you know. You think of the excuses you told your parents for why you got home late. I just never gave it up.

It's no sin to tell a good story.

I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.

I grew up loving books and stories. Reading became my favourite pastime, and you have to be a reader before you can be a writer.

Literature has always been the greatest fuel for my imagination.

I make pictures to tell a story, to tell lies, and to amuse.

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.

I've been into short stories ever since I read an Angela Carter collection when I was a teenager.

When reading fiction, we cannot automatically assume that what we read is fact.

Even as a little kid, I told lots of stories, and I wrote them down, and I loved reading fiction and fantasy.

I love to read stories. And I don't to get to talk about my favorite novels very often in my job.