Alexander knew that before he had light instead of darkness, he had to deserve light instead of darkness.
I’ll take your breath any way you give it to me, Shura.
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.
You have amazing gifts. Don’t squander them. Don’t give them out meaninglessly, don’t abuse them, don’t take them for granted. You are the weapon you carry with you till the day you die. -Tatiana and Alexander.
I want you to know that should something happen to me, don’t worry about my body. My soul isn’t going to return to it, nor to God. It’s flying straight to you, where it knows it can find you, in Lazarevo. I want to be neither with kings nor heroes, but with the queen of Lake Ilmen.
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.
They had no past. They had no future. They just were.
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.
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.
This is days and days and months and years and all the minutes in between, just you me.
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.
All good things come to those who wait.
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.
You have to keep your audience in your mind; if you’re writing stuff that you know nobody’s going to care about then you should rethink what you’re doing!
Daughters are supposed to be friends to their mothers in their old age.
The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.
I have a certain sensibility that I bring to my writing that comes from knowing two things: what I as a reader like to read, and what as a writer I am capable of. I know my own limits. I know there are things I cannot do.
Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.
Awash in a flood of hostility and despair, they battled and railed and shattered their bodies on one another, unable to find one strand, one sobering swallow of solace.
With my writing, because I live it, I have to be consumed by it, and that means you have to forget your other life, which is constantly pulling you from your work.