144 Quotes by Elizabeth Kostova

It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us.

And once you’ve seen that truth – really seen it – you can’t look away.

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

I understood in a flash that I must keep my mind safe, whatever came next. I believe now that it was not only enormous luck that brought me this understanding the very first day, but also my habit of living closely with my own mind, alone with it while I practiced.

I’ve noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.

But sometimes a man who is very good thinks, I am very bad, and it – destructs his life, everything. Because he does not believe that he has any right to do something, so he does less and less.

He can’t really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.

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.

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