Elizabeth Kostova Quotes - Page 2

Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarely understand what has happened.

I love to cook and I've cooked a lot of Bulgarian food over the years.

It's a shame for women's history to be all about men--first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.)

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.

These atheist cultures were certainly diligent in preserving the relics of their saints.

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.

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.

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.

Festina Lente (Hurry in slowly)

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.

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.

And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?

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.

Boys mystified me, although I dreamed vaguely of men.

You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.

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.

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.

I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.

My publishers are wonderful because they have let me write what I wanted to. They're wise enough to know that, with any author who's not simply writing formulas - who's trying to create something new - pressuring them to do something for market purposes almost always backfires. I can't imagine working under those circumstances, actually.

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.

Bulgarians eat tarator every single day in summer. They think of it as salad although we'd call it a soup. You can make it as thick or thin as you like depending on how much water you add. It's very practical in summer because yogurt cools the body faster than water, but the water hydrates you.

I wasn't brought up to be dazzled by money or fame.

For me, Dracula has always been associated with travel and beautiful historical places.

Natalie Bakopoulos has that rare gift, the ability to imagine a traumatic historical event in the form of individual lives and ordinary details. The Green Shore is compelling, personal, and full of quietly real moments.

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.