The lower imagination, the weaker, falls into the proliferation of images. My hope is someday to be able to figure out a connection between the work … - Cynthia Ozick

sometimes starting is so difficult. Because it's all chaos. It's the difference between writing an essay, which if it's about Henry James, at least you know that much. But with fiction you don't. It could be a scene in your mind or it could be some kind of tendril that you can barely define. So I have to force it. And then after – and this is real compulsion, real self-flagellation – it kind of takes off. But there's a lot of agony before. And sometimes during. And sometimes all through. But just before the end and revelations start coming, that's the joy. But mostly its hell.

Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.

Lie, illusion, deception, she said--was that it truly, the universal language we all speak?