Quotes from The Historian

“It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“Recently abandoned women can be complicated.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“As an adult I have often known that peculiar legacy time brings to the traveler: the longing to seek out a place a second time, to find deliberately what we stumbled on once before, to recapture the feeling of discovery. Sometimes we search out again even a place that was not remarkable itself - we look for it simply because we remember it. If we do find it, of course, everything is different. The rough-hewn door is still there, but it's much smaller; the day is cloudy instead of brilliant; it's spring instead of autumn; we're alone instead of with three friends. Or worse, with three friends instead of alone.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“These atheist cultures were certainly diligent in preserving the relics of their saints.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“[I]t seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn't Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn't it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help; they didn't look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line--something limited to the neighbors.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“It was a paradise of learning, and I prayed for eventual admission.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“In my mortal life, I saw mainly those texts that the church sanctioned--the gospels and the Orthodox commentary on them, for example. These works were of no use to me, in the end.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“These are works of history about your century, the twentieth. A fine century-I look forward to the rest of it.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“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.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

“It gave me a feeling of temporary acceptance into that elite community, to stroll across the quad at his side. It also gave me my first faint quiver of sexual belonging, the elusive feeling that if I slipped my hand into his as we walked along, a door would fall open somewhere in the long wall of reality as I knew it, never to be closed again.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian

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“Thank you," he said. "Welcome. Welcome especially to Mr. Coyle Mathis and the other men and women of Forster Hollow who are going to be employed at this rather strikingly energy-inefficient plant. It's a long way from Forster Hollow, isn't it?"

"So, yes, welcome," he said. "Welcome to the middle class! That's what I want to say. Although, quickly, before I go any further, I also want to say to Mr. Mathis here in the front row: I know you don't like me. And I don't like you. But, you know, back when you were refusing to have anything to do with us, I respected that. I didn't like it, but I had respect for your position. For your independence. You see, because I actually came from a place a little bit like Forster Hollow myself, before I joined the middle class. And, now you're middle-class, too, and I want to welcome you all, because it's a wonderful thing, our American middle class. It's the mainstay of economies all around the globe!"

"And now that you've got these jobs at this body-armor plant," he continued, "You're going to be able to participate in those economies. You, too, can help denude every last scrap of native habitat in Asia, Africa, and South America! You, too, can buy six-foot-wide plasma TV screens that consume unbelievable amounts of energy, even when they're not turned on! But that's OK, because that's why we threw you out of your homes in the first places, so we could strip-mine your ancestral hills and feed the coal-fired generators that are the number-one cause of global warming and other excellent things like acid rain. It's a perfect world, isn't it? It's a perfect system, because as long as you've got your six-foot-wide plasma TV, and the electricity to run it, you don't have to think about any of the ugly consequences. You can watch Survivor: Indonesia till there's no more Indonesia!"

"Just quickly, here," he continued, "because I want to keep my remarks brief. Just a few more remarks about this perfect world. I want to mention those big new eight-miles-per-gallon vehicles you're going to be able to buy and drive as much as you want, now that you've joined me as a member of the middle class. The reason this country needs so much body armor is that certain people in certain parts of the world don't want us stealing all their oil to run your vehicles. And so the more you drive your vehicles, the more secure your jobs at this body-armor plant are going to be! Isn't that perfect?"

"Just a couple more things!" Walter cried, wresting the mike from its holder and dancing away with it. "I want to welcome you all to working for one of the most corrupt and savage corporations in the world! Do you hear me? LBI doesn't give a shit about your sons and daughters bleeding in Iraq, as long as they get their thousand-percent profit! I know this for a fact! I have the facts to prove it! That's part of the perfect middle-class world you're joining! Now that you're working for LBI, you can finally make enough money to keep your kids from joining the Army and dying in LBI's broken-down trucks and shoddy body armor!"

The mike had gone dead, and Walter skittered backwards, away from the mob that was forming. "And MEANWHILE," he shouted, "WE ARE ADDING THIRTEEN MILLION HUMAN BEINGS TO THE POPULATION EVERY MONTH! THIRTEEN MILLION MORE PEOPLE TO KILL EACH OTHER IN COMPETITION OVER FINITE RESOURCES! AND WIPE OUT EVERY OTHER LIVING THING ALONG THE WAY! IT IS A PERFECT FUCKING WORLD AS LONG AS YOU DON'T COUNT EVERY OTHER SPECIES IN IT! WE ARE A CANCER ON THE PLANT! A CANCER ON THE PLANET!”
― Jonathan Franzen, quote from Freedom

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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