Nina Sankovitch Quotes

#1. I took on a year of reading books for a reason. Because words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth.

Nina Sankovitch

#2. A book isn't just a friend, but makes friends for you

Nina Sankovitch

#3. We are what we love to read, and when we admit to loving a book, we admit that the book represents some aspect of ourselves truly, whether it is that we are suckers for romance or pining for adventure or secretly fascinated by crime.

Nina Sankovitch

#4. And in reading, I discovered that the burden of living is the uneven and unlimited allotment of pain. Tragedy is conferred randomly and unfairly. Any promise of easy times to come is a false one.

Nina Sankovitch

#5. Books are reason to get up in the morning.

Nina Sankovitch

#6. But I know that I can survive the hard times, taking the worst of what happens to me as a burden but not as a noose .

Nina Sankovitch

#7. It is a gift we humans have, to hold on to beauty felt in a moment for a lifetime.

Nina Sankovitch

#8. I was scared of living a life not worth the living. Why did I deserve to live when my sister had died? I was responsible now for two lives, my sister's and my own, and, damn, I'd better live well.

Nina Sankovitch

#9. Are you busy?" the caller would ask. "Yes I'm working." Sitting in my chair, cats nearby, I was reading a great book. That was my job this year, and it was a good one. The salary was nonexistent, but the satisfaction was daily and deep.

Nina Sankovitch

#10. Because being witness to all types of human experience is important to understanding the world, but also to understanding myself. To define what is important to me, and who is important, and why.

Nina Sankovitch

#11. We all need a space to just let things be, a place to remember who we are and what is important to us, an interval of time that allows the happiness and joy of living back into our consciousness.

Nina Sankovitch

#12. Our house was open to anyone who needed a little extra support or comfort or just a home-cooked meal.

Nina Sankovitch

#13. Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that 'words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.' That was how I wanted to use books: as an escape back to life. I wanted to engulf myself in books and come up whole again.
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Nina Sankovitch

#14. The only balm to sorrow is memory; the only salve for the pain of losing someone to death is acknowledging the life that existed before.

Nina Sankovitch

#15. My hiatus is over, my soul and body are healed, but I will never leave the purple chair for long. So many books waiting to be read, so much happiness to be found, so much wonder to be revealed.

Nina Sankovitch

#16. Sorrow is the violent smashing of reason, in that reason has no power over it.

Nina Sankovitch

#17. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable.

Nina Sankovitch