Paullina Simons
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!Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Writing
There is a very definite Russian heart in me; that never dies. I think you're born and you live your life with it and you die with it. I'm very much an American - my books tend to be about American things, but inside there's that sort of tortured, long-suffering, aching, constantly analysing Russian soul underneath the happy American exterior.Collection: Book
When I was growing up, 'Anna Karenina' was one of my favourite books.Collection: Growing Up
I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.Collection: Writing
I tend to be a great optimist when it comes to the United States and the American way of life, I think precisely because I wasn't born into it.Collection: Thinking
Falling in love with you in the Summer Garden in the white nights in Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.Collection: Summer
Tatiana: "Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?" Alexander: "That wasn't fighting, Tatiana. That was foreplay.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Summer
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?Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Despair
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.Collection: Live Your Life
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.Collection: Pain
Up on the roof Tatiana thought about the evening minute, the minute she used to walk out the factory doors, turn her head to the left even before her body turned, and look for his face. The evening minute as she hurried down the street, her happiness curling her mouth upward to the white sky, the red wings speeding her to him, to look up at him and smile.Collection: White
Everything comes at a price. Everthing in your life. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay?Collection: Pay
Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: what do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important - ask: what do you love? ... I know who I am, she thought, taking his hand and turning to the altar. I am Tatiana. And I believe in, and hope for, and love Alexander for life.Collection: Believe
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?Collection: Thinking
Please stop looking at me, she thought, afraid of his eyes and terrified of her own heart.Collection: Heart
The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.Collection: Gone
Here I am, your one man circus freak show, having bled out for mother Russia, having desperately tried to get to you, now on top of you with this scourge marks, and you, who used to love me, who was sympathized, internalized, normalized everything, you are not allowed to turn away from me....this is what I am going to look like until the day I die. I can't get any peace from you ever unless you find away to make peace with this. Make peace with me. Or let me go for good.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Hug
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.Collection: Crazy
He is just protective over me-” “Not protective, Tania. Consumed.Collection: Protective
I'm going to die with Alexander's hand on my face, Tatiana thought. That is not a bad way to die. I cannot move. I can't get up. Just can't. She closed her eyes and felt herself drifting. 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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: War
Alexander knew that before he had light instead of darkness, he had to deserve light instead of darkness.Collection: Light
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?Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Rivers
All good things come to those who wait.Collection: Patience
Whenever you're unsure of yourself, whenever you're in doubt, ask yourself three questions. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? but most important, ask yourself, what do you love?Collection: Believe
I'll take your breath any way you give it to me, Shura.Collection: Giving
Tania, last time in Morozovo, I let you go, but not this time. This time we live together or we die together.Collection: Together
He sent you to redeem me, to comfort me, and to heal me—and that’s just so far,” he added with a smile.Collection: Comfort
Tania,” he whispers, “promise me you won’t forget me when I die.” “You won’t die, soldier,” she says. “You won’t die. Live! Live on, breathe on, claw onto life, and do not let go. Promise me you will live for me, and I promise you, when you’re done, I will be waiting for you.” She is sobbing. “Whenever you’re done, Alexander, I will be here, waiting for you.Collection: Letting Go
Live as if you have faith,” she said, “and faith shall be given to you.Collection: Have Faith
I don't want this life to end," said Alexander. "The good, the bad, the everything, the very old, to ever end.Collection: Want
They had no past. They had no future. They just were.Collection: Past
Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you.Collection: Heart
Love is, to be loved,” said Alexander, “in return.Collection: Love Is