Paullina Simons

“To lead a life so wholly happy, so wholly unexamined that she could be dying, could be betrayed, could be besieged on…

— 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…

— Paullina Simons

“But first my feet will freeze and then my legs and then my insides, they will all turn to ice. And my…

— Paullina Simons

“Do you need me to com ewith you? She'll need a stretcher," Kashnikov said. "No she won't," said Alexander. "iI'll carry her…

— Paullina Simons

“Hold your head high, and if you’re going to go down, go down knowing you have not in any way compromised your…

— Paullina Simons

Alexander to Tatiana: I love you as much as it is possible for a man to love a woman.

— Paullina Simons

We can’t forget that I owe you my life.” She gazed at him. “We can’t forget that I belong to you.” “I…

— Paullina Simons

…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.

— Paullina Simons

“When he asked isn't it beautiful, my father was seeing his youth, and his youth was beautiful. He closed his eyes and…

— Paullina Simons

Dear God, Tatiana prayed in bed that night, turning to the wall and pulling the white sheet and the thin brown blanket…

— Paullina Simons

“the days of the young, when they gulped the air and lived to see the better world, the grown-up world, when they…

— Paullina Simons

“I found my true love on the banks of the river Kama,” whispered Alexander, staring at her. “I found my true love…

— Paullina Simons

We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life…

— Paullina Simons

“What a prison you have set up for me with your first love.” She put her arms tighter around him and said…

— Paullina Simons

“Tania, when I found you, I felt for that hour or two we were together - before Dimitri, before Dasha - that…

— Paullina Simons

“He heard bombs exploding like fireworks, and as if in a dream his father's face flashed before him, wanting to know what…

— Paullina Simons

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!…

— Paullina Simons

“During the day she carried her boy, bandaged and fed the wounded, leaving her own festering wounds until night-time when she licked…

— Paullina Simons

“Simply, this is what she believed: she believed that the universe showed each of us certain things, that it made certain things…

— Paullina Simons

“That's what it was. I had been given something I absolutely did not deserve. And only here in coming back did I…

— Paullina Simons

Where was he, her Alexander, of once? Was he truly gone? The Alexander of the Summer Garden, of their first Lazarevo days,…

— Paullina Simons

“Tatiana knew that she belonged irrevocably to Alexander. She thought she could extricate herself from him, that she could go on with…

— Paullina Simons

“I told you,” Harry was saying to Ben. “I warned you. As soon as I saw her from distance, do you remember…

— Paullina Simons

“Alexander: “First we will send the frontovik into the streets with guns. When they are dead, we will send me, with a…

— Paullina Simons

Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: What do believe in? What do you…

— Paullina Simons

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…

— Paullina Simons

We walk alone through this world, but if we're lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains…

— Paullina Simons

“This wasn’t a way of getting over a passing crush on your older sister’s swain. This was the moon of Jupiter and…

— Paullina Simons

“This Zippo read, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.. for I'm the…

— Paullina Simons

“I can't do it," Tatiana said "I can't walk down the streets of our life with you." "I know." They turned back…

— Paullina Simons

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

— Paullina Simons

“Alexander looked into the barrel of one of the guns. He blinked. O God, please look after Tania all alone in the…

— Paullina Simons

Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven,…

— Paullina Simons

“I walked into my dream and kept walking with my Leningrad in front of me and behind me and all around me.…

— Paullina Simons

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

— Paullina Simons

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

— Paullina Simons

“Father continues to make the vulgar error,” she said, “that to a woman, love is her whole existence.”

— Paullina Simons

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

— Paullina Simons

“Slightly less time than it takes one woman to make one life, they managed to snuff out a million and a half…

— Paullina Simons

I know that sometimes the things we carry become too much for us. We are burned down, but somehow we have to…

— Paullina Simons