Quotes from Paullina Simons

Tania, there is so much still ahead of you. Be patient with life

All good things come to those who wait.

We can't forget that I owe you my life." She gazed at him. "We can't forget that I belong to you." "I like that sound of that," Alexander said, hugging her tighter.

He sent you to redeem me, to comfort me, and to heal me—and that's just so far," he added with a smile.

Do I think she has forgotten me; found a new life? Assumed that I was dead, accepted that I was dead. Alexander shrugged. I think about it all the time. I live inside my heart. But what can I do? I have to move toward her.

And that's my point: all great things worth having require great sacrifice worth giving.

Where was he, her Alexander, of once? Was he truly gone? The Alexander of the Summer Garden, of their first Lazarevo days, of the hat in his hands, white toothed, peaceful, laughing, languid, stunning Alexander, had he been left far behind? Well, Tatiana supposed that was only right. For Alexander believed his Tatiana of once was gone, too. The swimming child Tatiana of the Luga, of the Neva, of the River Kama. Perhaps on the surface they were still in their twenties, but their hearts were old.

Tania...» sussurrò Alexander. «Non ti lascerò andare finché non ti avrò avuta abbastanza. Finché non mi avrai scaldato dentro e fuori».

Only one bear eats from this honey pot, Tatia

She was entrenched. She had dug a trench all around herself called Alexander , and she couldn't leave.

Tatiana lived for that evening hour with him that propelled her into her future and into the barely formed, painful feelings that she could neither express nor understand. Friends walking in the lucent dusk. There was nothing more she could have from him, and there was nothing more she wanted from him but that one hour at the end of her long day when her heart beat and her breath was short and she was happy.

He yanked up a couple of mushrooms. "Tania, can we eat these?" Taking them out of his hands and throwing them back on the ground, Tatiana said, "Yes. But we will only be able to eat them once.

The Field of Mars, June, death, life, white nights, Dasha, Dimitri, the all came… And went. But there Alexander still was, standing on that street, on that curb, in the sun, looking at her under the elms, looking at provenance across from him provenance in a white dress with red roses, licking her ice cream with red lips, singing. His and only his for one hundred minutes, blink of an eye and gone. It all was.

No! he wanted to cry out. No, Tania, please come back. What can I leave her with, what can I say, what one word can I leave with her, for her? What one word for my wife? "Tatiasha," Alexander called after her. God, what was the curator's name...? She glanced back. "Remember Orbeli-

I don't want to die," whispered Marina. "and not feel just once what you feel." She struggled for her breath. "Just once in my life, Tania!" "Tanechka..." she whispered. What does it feel like?" Tatiana continued to gently caress Marina's forehead. "It feels," she whispered, "as if you're not alone.

I didn't know how to live my life, and suddenly I was thrust into it and had no choice but to live it.

We've had a minute, Tatiana thought. We had our minutes on the bus. And at Kirov. We had our minutes in Lugo. And in the Summer Garden. Breathless minutes, we had. What we want, she thought, keeping herself from welling up, is eternity.

The Bronze Horseman would pursue her into her grave. She felt it. Into her eternity, clambering behind her in the night and in the day, in every hour of sorrow, in every minute of weakness, in darkness, in light, through all of America he would be rattling at her heels, the way he had been relentlessly rattling at her through the past eleven hundred days, through the past eleven hundred nights, right into her maddening dust. How much longer for Tatiana's life?

Through the haze in front of her she heard Alexander's voice, "Tatiana, I love you. Do you hear me? I love you like I've never loved anyone in my whole life. Now, get up. For me, Tatia. For me, please get up and go take care of your sister. Go on. And I'll take care of you." His lips kissed her cheek.

Es que no te acuerdas de lo que te dije en Berlín, cuando estábamos perdidos en el bosque, luchando para rebelarnos contra nuestro destino? —Sí —le contestó Tatiana, rodeándole el cuello con las manos, cerrando los ojos—. Dijiste que ya me habías dejado marchar una vez, que viviríamos juntos o moriríamos juntos. —Eso es —dijo Alexander—. Y esta vez, viviremos juntos.

Alexander, me has roto el corazón. Pero por haberme llevado a tu espalda, por tirar de mi trineo de muerte, por darme tu último pedazo de pan, por el cuerpo que te destrozaste por mí, por el hijo que me has dado, por los veintinueve días que vivimos en el paraíso, por todas nuestras arenas blancas de Naples y nuestros vinos de Napa, por todos los días que has sido mi primer y mi último aliento, por Orbeli... Te perdonaré.

You are my hand grenade, my artillery fire. You have replaced my heart with yourself.

Open your eyes, soldier," Tatiana said fondly, caressing his face."Are you hungry?" "I was hungry," Alexander said. "But you fed me." His body was shaking underneath his sheet.

It wasn't this soldier's uniform that affected her, and it wasn't his looks. It was the way he had stared at her from across the street, separated from her by ten meters of concrete, a bus, and the electric wires of the tram line.