Paullina Simons Quotes

“We walk alone through this world, but if we're lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.”

“And then, because she was Tatiana and because she couldn’t help herself, and because he wouldn’t have it any other way, she ran to him and was in his arms.”

“Not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.”

“Courage, Alexan­der,” she whis­pered.
“Courage, Ta­tiana.”

“I love you breathlessly, my amazing man.”

“The power you have over someone who loves you is greater than any other power you'll ever have.”

“I love you as much as it is possible for a man to love a woman.”

“If there is God, I thought… Please some day let me make love to this girl while she wears that dress." "Oh…" "Tatiasha… isn't it nice to know there is a God?”

“Love is when he is hungry and you feed him. Love is knowing when he is hungry.”

“You will find a way to live without me. You will find a way to live for both of us,' Alexander said to Tatiana as the swelling Kama River flowed from the Ural Mountains through a pine village named Lazarevo, once when they were in love, and young.”

“We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder.”

“Everything comes at a price. Everthing in your life. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay?”

“I was blinded by stupidity for a brief moment in our life, for a flicker in the eternity in which you and I live, and I stumbled.”

“Lazarevo drips you into my soul, dawn drop by moonlight drop from the river Kama. When you look for me, look for me there, because that's where I'll be all the days of my life.”

“I don't want this life to end," said Alexander. "The good, the bad, the everything, the very old, to ever end.”

“Live as if you have faith,” she said, “and faith shall be
given to you.”

“Alexander knew that before he had light instead of darkness, he had to deserve light instead of darkness.”

“Please don't die," she whispered. "I don't think I can bury
you. I already buried everyone else."

"How can I die," Alexander said, his voice breaking, "when you
have poured your immortal blood into me?”

“There are some battles, no matter how much you don’t want to fight them, that you just have to fight. That are worth giving your life for.”

“When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.”

“Love is, to be loved,” said Alexander, “in return.”

“Memory - that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort.”

“They had no past. They had no future. They just were.”

“I saved you for me.”

“Will you remember that? Anywhere you are, if you can look up and find Perseus in the sky, find that smile, and hear the galactic wind whisper your name, you'll know that it's me, calling for you… calling you back to Lazarevo. (Alexander)”

“Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.”

“Dear God, Tatiana prayed in bed that night, turning to the wall and pulling the white sheet and the thin brown blanket over herself. If You are there somewhere, please teach me how to hide what I never knew how to show.”

“In Alexander's life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long as I am, you are permanent, soldier.”

“Tatiana realized she was too young to hide well what was in her heart but
old enough to know that her heart was in her eyes.”

“…. and when Tatiana lifted her glistening eyes to him, Alexander was looking down at her with his I’ll-get-on-the-bus-for-you-anytime face.”

“Thank you," she whispered, "for keeping yourself alive, soldier."
"You're welcome," he whispered back.”

“Tania, last time in Morozovo, I let you go, but not this time. This time we live together or we die together.”

“But on that sunlit Sunday, Alexander knew nothing, thought nothing, imagined nothing. He forgot Dimitri and war and the Soviet Union and escape plans, and even America, and crossed the street for Tatiana Metanova.”

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved
earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
Unyielding.”

“If I can live through this, he thought, I can live through anything. If I can live through this, I WILL live through anything.”

“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.”

“This is days and days and months and years and all the minutes in between, just you me.”

“Alexander smoked and watched her from his tree stump bench. What are you doing? she would ask him.

Nothing, he would reply. Nothing but growing my pain into madness.”

“We’ll meet again in Lvov, my love and I…” Tatiana hums, eating her ice cream, in our Leningrad, in jasmine June, near Fontanka, the Neva, the Summer Garden, where we are forever young.”

“Please stop looking at me, she thought, afraid of his eyes and terrified of her own heart.”

“He is just protective over me-”
“Not protective, Tania. Consumed.”

“Alexander, my nights, my days, my every thought. You will fall away from me in just a while, won’t you, and I’ll be whole again, and I will go on and feel for someone else, the way everybody does.

But my innocence is gone forever.”

“Tatia: I think its too big to fit”

“Oh Alexander," she said, "what do you want from me…"
"Everything!" he whispered fiercely.”

“I know that sometimes the things we carry become too much for us. We are burned down, but somehow we have to pick ourselves up and keep going”

“Shura, I’m yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body or your death.”

“There will be only one standard, the standard of survival at all cost, and it will be up to you to say at what price survival. Hold your head high, and if you are going to go down, go down knowing you have not in any way compromised your soul.
Pulling him by the arm, Babushka said “That’s enough. Tania, you do whatever you have to do to survive, and damn your soul.””

“That’s the saddest loss of all, to go on for a few weeks, a few days, a night, a minute, and think everything is still all right when the structure you’ve built your life on has crumbled. We should have been mourning you, but instead we made plans, went to work, dreamed, loved, not knowing you were already behind us.”

“Alexander, were you looking for me?”

“(Tatiana nervously looked down at the present.)
"Thank you".
Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper.
"No. Open first. Then say thank you."
She smiled.
"What do I do? Do I take the paper off?"
"Yes. You tear it off."
"And then what?"
"And then you throw it away."
"The whole present or just the paper?" Slowly he said, "Just the paper."
"and but you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?"
"It’s just paper."”