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.

— Elizabeth Kostova

Elizabeth Kostova Quotes

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.

— Elizabeth Kostova

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

— Elizabeth Kostova

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

— Elizabeth Kostova

Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish.

— Elizabeth Kostova

Politicians who talk about purity usually end up deciding who is pure and who is not.

— Elizabeth Kostova

We went on growing food and eating and sleeping and I cooked for a big crowd here every day, all my family. What else could we do? You just go on, if you have to.

— Elizabeth Kostova

I’ve retrained myself since childhood into a kind of diligent goodwill toward life. Life and I became friends some years ago – not the sort of exciting friendship I longed for as a child, but a kindly truce, a pleasure in coming home.

— Elizabeth Kostova

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.

— Elizabeth Kostova

Didn’t Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn’t it expert in superstition?

— Elizabeth Kostova

Life and I became friends some years ago – not the sort of exciting friendship I longed for as a child, but a kindly truce, a pleasure in coming home every day to my apartment. I have a moment now and then – as I peel an orange and take it from kitchen counter to table – when I feel almost a pang of contentment, perhaps at that raw colour.

— Elizabeth Kostova

Pushing out through the doors, I experienced that mingled relief and disappointment one feels on departure from a great museum – relief at being returned to the familiar, less intense, more manageable world, and disappointment at that world’s lack of mystery.

— Elizabeth Kostova

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.

— Elizabeth Kostova

Together we will advance the historian’s work beyond anything the world has ever seen. There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean blood.

— Elizabeth Kostova

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.

— Elizabeth Kostova

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

— Elizabeth Kostova

I felt sure, glaring at the children as they settled onto the sand with their shovels, that these creatures were never threatened by the grimness of history, either. Then, looking down on their glossy heads, I realized that they were indeed threatened; they were simply unaware of it. We were all vulnerable.

— Elizabeth Kostova

Scholarship must go on. For good or for evil, but inevitably, in every field.

— Elizabeth Kostova

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?

— Elizabeth Kostova

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

— Elizabeth Kostova

But I turned my feet away from the cheering pub – a mistake that has been the downfall of many a poor scholar – and towards Rare Books.

— Elizabeth Kostova
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