Stolen Beauty Quotes

“What we had between us was nothing as simple as longing or sexual desire. It was a hunger for beauty and meaning, and a willingness to search in the world and in ourselves to find it. We had a sense of permanence and the fear of oblivion. We knew, of course, that everything was transient and nothing could last- and yet it didn't stop us from wishing for something eternally beautiful”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“But doesn't everyone want to be held just the right way, and for just long enough? If we don't have it, we're sad, but if we're held too tightly, then we feel bound.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“If you're lucky, life teaches you to survive. The California sky is blue, you wake up, you make coffee, you fry eggs, and you don't look back. You don't think about the freckled maid who served smoked meats and pickled asparagus when you were a girl. You don't think about yesterday or what's been lost. Even when you hear the dead whispering, you go on.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“Women are much stronger than men," she said quietly. "It may not always look like we're the strong ones, because our men would never let it seem that way. But every woman I know is stronger than her husband. Adele was. I certainly was. And so are you.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“Everyone is sad sometimes, and art is one of the best remedies for a bout of melancholy. Art speaks to you, and you don't have to say anything in reply.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“It made no sense, and yet it made perfect sense: the Nazis' brilliance, the thing that kept everyone doing what we were told, was the way they made everything - even a coercive trip to Germany - sound extremely logical and lawful. This was their first great cruelty: strict adherence to laws that served only themselves.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“It's important to preserve what's old and beautiful, even as we welcome what's new.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“I was a jew who didn't practice Judaism, a Viennese banished from Austria, and an enemy alien in Britain.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“He works and works until something alights on the canvas that's much more than either one of you....That's his genius.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty

“Klimt's unblinking honesty in the face of human suffering was a truth I understood - and as I stared into his swirling eternity I saw the certainty of my life rise up to the glass ceiling, hover for a moment, and vanish. I felt the circle of time open into a possibility I had never dreamt of. In that moment, I saw exactly what Klimt meant by truth in art.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Stolen Beauty