Nina Sankovitch Quotes & Sayings

Sorrow is the violent smashing of reason, in that reason has no power over it. — Nina Sankovitch

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

Books are reason to get up in the morning. — Nina Sankovitch

Life is hard, unfair, painful. But life is also guaranteed - one hundred percent, no doubt, no question - to offer unexpected and sudden moments of beauty, joy, love, acceptance, euphoria. The good stuff. It is our ability to recognize and then hold on to the moments of good stuff that allows us to survive, even thrive. And when we can share the beauty, hope is restored. — Nina Sankovitch

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

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

It is a gift we humans have, to hold on to beauty felt in a moment for a lifetime. — Nina Sankovitch

Remembrance is acknowledging that a life was lived ...
My father finally wrote out his memories for a reason. 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. Stories about lives remembered bring us backward while allowing us to move forward. — Nina Sankovitch

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

A book isn't just a friend, but makes friends for you — Nina Sankovitch

The value of experience, real or imagined, is that is shows us how to - or how NOT to - live. In reading about different characters and the consequences of their choices, I was finding myself changed. I was discovering new and distinct ways of undergoing life's sorrows and joys ...
and all the great books I was reading - were about the complexity and entirety of the human experience. About the things we wish to forget and those we want more and more of. About how we react and how we wish we could react. Books ARE experience, the words of authors proving the solace of love, the fulfillment of family, the torment of war, and the wisdom of memory. Joy and tears, pleasure and pain: everything came to me while I read in my purple chair. i had never sat so still, and yet experienced so much. — Nina Sankovitch

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

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.
p.20 — Nina Sankovitch

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

Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape but reading to escape. 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. — Nina Sankovitch

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

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

Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. — Nina Sankovitch

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

Desire for a person is not the same thing as having that unique appreciation and need for them, nor is affection. Desire waxes and wanes, and affection can be felt without long-standing commitment. But 'You matter to me' means that the long haul is accepted, even willingly taken on: I will carry you, hold you and applaud you, from here on in. Dependability: I will be here to take care of you. And when you are gone, I will be here to remember you. — Nina Sankovitch

The truth of living is proved not by the inevitability of death but by the wonder that we lived at all. Remembering lives from the past ratifies that truth, more and more so the older we get. When I was growing up, my father told me once, "Do by look for happiness; life itself is happiness." It took me years to understand what he meant. The value of a life lived; the sheer value of living. — Nina Sankovitch

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

Tolstoy wrote, 'The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.' He understood this service as a religious duty. For me, I understand it as a fact of life, as THE fact of life. What we do for each other is what survives. My sister is dead, but everything she did for me while she was alive is still going strong. I can still feel her hand reaching across the backseat of our car in Berlin, and I still hear her voice, our conversations going late into the night. — Nina Sankovitch

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