Cynthia Ozick Quotes

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.

Lost - yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.

Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

Eternity gives nothing back of what one leaves out of the minutes.

History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings.

What business does memory have with time?

Le temps qui change les e" tres ne modifie pas l'image que nous avons garde e d'eux. Although time changes people, it cannot change the image we have already made of them.

You count the hours you could have spent with your mother. It's a lifetime in itself.

Ever step you take is forever. You cant make it go away. None of it. You understand what I'm sayin?

Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

Time, where did you go? / Why did you leave me here alone? / Wait, don't go so fast / I'm missing the moments as they pass

You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now.

He who know most grieves most for wasted time.

Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?

he who finds he has wasted a shilling may by diligence hope to fetch it up again; but no repentance or industry can ever bring back one wasted hour.

Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever.

I see no comfort in outliving one's friends, and remaining a mere monument of the times which are past.

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time.

My father died very suddenly at sixty-three. Just dropped dead. For a long time afterward, I'd ask myself, Why didn't I ask him to play golf more? Why didn't I spend more time with him? But when you're off trying to get the brass ring, you forget and overlook those little things. It gives you a certain amount of regret later on, but there's nothing you can do about it. So you just forge on.

If I could save time in a bottle The first thing that I'd like to do Is to save every day

People forget ideas; they don't forget the real presence.