Elizabeth Kostova Quotes
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It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.
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I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.
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The thing that most haunted me that day, however...was the fact that these things had - apparently - actually occurred...For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth - really seen it - you can't look away.
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My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.
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I've read there is no such thing as a single tear, that old poetic trope. And perhaps there isn't, since hers was simply a companion to my own.
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We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.
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...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.
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What comes to your mind when you think of the word Transylvania, if you ponder it at all? What comes to my mind are mountains of savage beauty, ancient castles, werewolves, and witches - a land of magical obscurity. How, in short, am I to believe I will still be in Europe, on entering such a realm? I shall let you know if it's Europe or fairyland, when I get there. First, Snagov - I set out tomorrow.
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Faith is simply whatever is real to us.
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He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker's novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.
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It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.
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I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.
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For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.
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...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?
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No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.
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It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.
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You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.
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When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.
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In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.
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I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality.
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It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.
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I love to cook and I've cooked a lot of Bulgarian food over the years.
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It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.
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In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.
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I've always been interested in foreign relations. It's my belief that study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present rather than an escape from it.
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The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
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Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.
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I wasn't brought up to be dazzled by money or fame.
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And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?
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I think it's important to recognise that 'The Da Vinci Code' opened up a vast new audience for a general readership interested in historical detective stories and research into history.
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