Quotes from Elizabeth Kostova

I suppose familiarity erodes even the most awful memories

No I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

In this spot, he is housed in evil. Reader, unbury him with a word.

What did I know about the horrors of the past? Did they leak into rooms like mist, under doors? Or shatter windows and burst directly into one's presence?

They were taking my natural feelings away, so quietly that it could have occurred without my noticing. I understood in a flash that I must keep my mind safe, whatever came next.

He reminded her of the way male lions look sad, as if their nobility is a terrible weight.

as if wherever he taught was a dining room instead of a classroom, and we were all eating at his table.

I felt like an orphan.

There is a final resource to which I've resorted when necessary—the imagination. I have done this with judicious care, imagining for my reader only what I already know is very likely, and even then only when an informed speculation can set these documents into their proper context. Where I have been unable to explain events or motives, I have left them unexplained, out of respect for their hidden realities.

have often thought that the terrible thing in communism was not just that we turned against each other. It was that we turned away from each other.

I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.

At first I thought I would study literature. Then, however, I realised I loved true stories even better than imaginary ones.

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

When you are not allowed to do something, it often becomes very important.

the story of the invention of the croissant, the tribute of a Parisian pastry chef to Vienna's victory over the Ottomans. The croissant, of course, represented the crescent moon of the Ottoman flags, a symbol the West devours with coffee to this very day.

We have all, of course, heard the story of the invention of the croissant, the tribute of a Parisian pastry chef to Vienna's victory over the Ottomans. The croissant, of course, represented the crescent moon of the Ottoman flags, a symbol the West devours with coffee to this very day.

People seem to believe that despair is the same as anguish, but it is not. It's true that despair is surrounded by anguish, but at its core, despair is silent, a blank page.

I wondered if a novel could have the power to make something so strange happen in actuality.

This corner of history was as real as the tiled floor under our feet or the wooden tabletop under our fingers. The people to whom it had happened had actually lived and breathed and felt and thought and then died, as we did - as we would.

Ao sairmos para o anoitecer dourado das ruas bizantinas, refleti como era estranho que, mesmo sob as circunstâncias mais extraordinárias, durante episódios mais perturbadores da vida, nos lugares mais distantes de casa e de tudo que nos é familiar, possam existir esses momentos de incontestável alegria.

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

Tan diferente parece la ladera de una colina turca de la pendiente de un prado magiar? Claro que no, pero la diferencia es imposible de borrar del ojo cuando la historia te informa desde la mente.

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

He was simply gone, and he took all our peace with him.