"This corner of history was as real as the tiled floor under our feet or the wooden tabletop under our fingers. The people to whom it had happened had actually lived and breathed and felt and thought a..."
- Elizabeth Kostova
"He reminded her of the way male lions look sad, as if their nobility is a terrible weight."
"In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know."
"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."
"As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination."
"This time I felt my own face redden. Talking with this woman was like sitting still for a series of slaps, delivered arhythmically so you couldn't know when the next one was coming."
"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, i..."
"It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy."