The Din In The Head Quotes

“Admittedly, there is always a golden age, the one not ours, the one that once was or will someday be. One's own time is never satisfactory, except to the very rich or the smugly oblivious.”
― Cynthia Ozick, The Din In The Head: Spirited Essays on Great Literature, Wit, and the Curative Power of Imagination

“Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom.”
― Cynthia Ozick, The Din In The Head: Spirited Essays on Great Literature, Wit, and the Curative Power of Imagination

“On a gray afternoon I sit in a silent room and contemplate din. In the street a single car passes - a rapid bass vowel - and then it is quiet again. So what is this uproar, this hubbub, this heaving rumble of zigzag static I keep hearing? This echo chamber spooling out spirals of chaos? An unmistakable noise as clearly mine as fingerprint or twist of DNA: the thrum of regret, of memory, of defeat, of mutability, of bitter fear, made up of shame and ambition and anger and vanity and wishing. The soundtrack of a movie of the future, an anticipatory ribbon of scenes long dreaded, of daydreams without a prayer of materializing. Or else: the replay of unforgotten conversations, humiliating, awkward, indelible. Mainly it is the buzz of the inescapably mundane, the little daily voice that insists and insists: right now, not now, too late, too soon, why not, better not, turn it on, turn it off, notice this, notice that, be sure to take care of, remember not to. The nonstop chatter that gossips, worries, envies, invokes, yearns, condemns, self-condemns.”
― Cynthia Ozick, The Din In The Head: Spirited Essays on Great Literature, Wit, and the Curative Power of Imagination