144 Quotes by 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.

In your country you don't care about history, and in my country we cannot recover from it.

I felt sure…that these creatures were never threatened by the grimness of history, either.

Looking down on their glossy heads, I realized that they were indeed threatened; they were simply unaware of it. We are all vulnerable.

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

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

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?