"You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book."
— Elizabeth Kostova (The Historian)

"When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation."
— Elizabeth Kostova (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 (The Historian)

"Boys mystified me, although I dreamed vaguely of men."
— Elizabeth Kostova

"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 (La Historiadora)

"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 (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 (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 (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 (The Historian)

"The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need."
— Elizabeth Kostova (The Swan Thieves)

"It touched me to be trusted with something terrible."
— Elizabeth Kostova (The Historian)

"...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?"
— Elizabeth Kostova (The Swan Thieves)

"There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief."
— Elizabeth Kostova (The Historian)

"Festina Lente (Hurry in slowly)"
— Elizabeth Kostova (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 (The Historian)

"What comes to your mind when you think of the word Transylvania, if you ponder it at all? What comes to my mind are mountains of savage beauty, ancient castles, werewolves, and witches - a land of magical obscurity. How, in short, am I to believe I will still be in Europe, on entering such a realm? I shall let you know if it's Europe or fairyland, when I get there. First, Snagov - I set out tomorrow."
— Elizabeth Kostova

""When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation."
"
— Elizabeth Kostova

"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 realease of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light."
— Elizabeth Kostova (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 (The Historian)

"'festina lente' (bergegas namun relaks)"
— Elizabeth Kostova (The Historian)