Elizabeth Kostova

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

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

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

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.

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.

Faith is simply whatever is real to us.

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.

Ao sairmos para o anoitecer dourado das ruas bizantinas, refleti como era estranho que, mesmo sob as circunstâncias mais extraordinárias, durante episódios mais perturbadores da vida, nos lugares mais distantes de casa e de tudo que nos é familiar, possam existir esses momentos de incontestável alegria.

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.

-Do you think artists are supposed to be happy? -Everyone is supposed to be. -I said staunchly,and I knew that I was indeed an idiot and that was my destiny and I didn't mind it