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The Swan Thieves QUOTES

The Swan Thieves QUOTES

1 " -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 "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

2 " Faith is simply whatever is real to us. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

3 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

4 " And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new? "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

5 " 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? "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

6 " It's a shame for a woman'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 when they happened. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

7 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

8 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

9 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

10 " ...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find? "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

11 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

12 " The heart does not go backward. Only the mind. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

13 " ..then you must say to her, ‘Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you... "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

14 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

15 " 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.) "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

16 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

17 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

18 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

19 " 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. "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves

20 " Doesn't every love express itself this way, with the seeds of both its flowering and its ruin in the very first words, the first breath, the first though? "

― Elizabeth Kostova , The Swan Thieves