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2ff93af
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It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.
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library
home
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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abd0d22
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You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.
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libraries
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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cdb28ac
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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.
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history
survival
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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5c97fe9
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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09bd24f
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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.
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words
language
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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4746e0e
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And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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f20c253
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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.
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letters
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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20f8922
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It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.
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dark
fiction
vlad-the-impaler
european
historian
dracula
moody
historical
vampire
horror
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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4045c02
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Recently abandoned women can be complicated.
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women
complicated
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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1d54a87
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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e102ee8
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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02362ee
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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.
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marriage
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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6d35d8c
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As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.
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human-history
fascination
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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d5b9b6f
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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.
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joy
life
weird
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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4ca06f5
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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b92a729
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what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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fb8b917
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I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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bd7ae8b
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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 mu..
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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050048f
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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d38247d
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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8419e86
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He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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431d935
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The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.
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remembrance
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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cc1e663
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then you must say to her, 'Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you...
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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b184050
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I believe in walking out of a museum before the paintings you've seen begin to run together. How else can you carry anything away with you in your mind's eye?
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museum
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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45420f5
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Festina Lente (Hurry in slowly)
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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7dee8ba
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Faith is simply whatever is real to us.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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16c0101
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I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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7bf22d5
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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, if you're not careful."
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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3777aa6
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These atheist cultures were certainly diligent in preserving the relics of their saints.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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2cb4f28
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It's a shame for women's history to be all about men--first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.)
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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50ad86b
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For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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8a105b1
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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 helple..
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protestantism
church
vampires
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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0d754f8
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My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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8701769
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It was a paradise of learning, and I prayed for eventual admission.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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7bc4d3f
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People seem to believe that despair is the same as anguish, but it is not. It's true that despair is surrounded by anguish, but at its core, despair is a silent, blank page.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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e35d7b6
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And why should I do such a thing- tell you something that can only dismay you? Well, that is the nature of love: it is brutal in its demands.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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ffa158d
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I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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c48b575
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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122d74c
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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.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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58e2a16
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He said there is a place in Gaul, the oldest church in their part of the world, where some of the Latin monks have outwitted death by secret means. He offered to sell me their secrets, which he has inscribed in a book.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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44c50bc
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We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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05a3062
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Marriages are like certain books, a story where you turn the last page and you think it's over and then there's an epilogue, and after that you're inclined to go on wondering about the characters or imagining that their lives continue without you, dear reader. Until you forget most of that book, you're stuck puzzling over what happened to them after you closed it.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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b220a4e
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These are works of history about your century, the twentieth. A fine century-I look forward to the rest of it.
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Elizabeth Kostova |
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c16b3cd
|
He was my husband, my apartment mate, my soul mate, the father of the little plant in my confused soil, the lover who had made me adore his body without inhibition after my years of relative solitude, the person for whom I'd given up my old self.
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Elizabeth Kostova |