Paullina Simons citations

“Shura… are you… in love with me?"
"Turn to me," Alexander said. She turned. "Tatia, I worship you. I'm crazy in love with you. I want you to marry me.”

“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.”

“Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: What do believe in? What do you hope for? What do you love?”

“I love you breathlessly, my amazing man.”

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

“Alexander tilted his head and kissed her deeply on the lips. He let go of her hands, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. They kissed as if in a fever… they kissed as if the breath were leaving their bodies.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Tatiana: "Alexander, were you looking for me?"
Alexander: "All my life.”

“Tatiana: "Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?"
Alexander: "That wasn't fighting, Tatiana. That was foreplay.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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?”

“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.”