Quotes from Elizabeth Kostova

It's the reward of the business (historian), to look history in the eye & say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

Imagine, Dracula a pawn in the hands of the infidel. I wasted no time there-I learned everything I could about them, so that I might surpass them all. That was when I vowed to make history, not to be its victim.

there are things you have to do for yourself, even if everyone else thinks you're crazy.

If I accepted one supernatural occurrence, I should certainly accept others; it was only logical.

Der Glaube ist das, was fuer uns real ist.

Si tuvieras que elegir entre la cordura, tu vida tal como la recuerdas, antes que la verdadera inestabilidad, ¿qué elegirías como manera adecuada para vivir de un estudioso?

I remembered some of what I'd read in the past: the small group of the original Impressionists, including one woman-Berthe Morisot- who'd first banded together in 1874 to exhibit works in a style that the Paris Salon found too experimental for inclusion. We postmoderns take them for granted, or disdain them, or love them too easily.

Then draw everything. Do a hundred drawings a day,' he said fiercely. 'And remember that it's a hellish life.

Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish. I thought later how simply and quickly they had introduced that concept to me, as easily as breaking a little finger. For some reason they had decided not to beat me.

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.

Then sleep reached her, a sucking undertow, and she went over backward.

Her lack of maidenly scruple would have amused me at another moment, but just now her face was so grimly determined that I could only wonder what she had in mind. Nothing could have been less seductive, anyway, than her expression at that moment.

Manchmal gibt es kaum etwas Schwierigeres, als zu jemandem zu sprechen, der ueber die Macht des Schweigens verfuegt.

The station was crowded by the time the express pulled up. I felt then, as I do now, that there is no joy like the arrival of a train [...] particularly a European train that will carry you south.

And I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad.

The study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.

El pasado es muy útil, pero sólo cuando puede enseñarnos algo acerca del presente. El presente es lo que cuenta. Pero me gusta mucho el pasado.

Old women who live long enough mainly count the bodies, whether we want to or not.

Ich verstehe mit achtzig was ich mit siebzig noch nicht verstehen konnte, naemlich dass man am Ende so gut wie allen vergibt, nur sich selbst nicht.

I would not allow anyone into the center of myself; I would make myself a place to go, deep inside, no matter what happened.

It was the beginning of that long bifurcation that became my life: Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish.

you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

She ate like a polite wolf.

Strangers are strange to each other.