Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian Quotes

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

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.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

Recently abandoned women can be complicated.

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

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.

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 was good to walk into a library again it smelled like home.

... I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad.

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.