“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”

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

“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.”

“There is one moment, a moment in eternity. Before we find out the truth about one another. That simple moment is the one that propels us through life – what we felt at the very edge of our future, standing over the abyss, before we knew for sure we loved. Before we knew for sure we loved forever. … Before all that, you and I walked through The Summer Garden, and once in a while my bare arm touched your arm, and once in a while you spoke and that gave me an excuse to look up into your face, into your laughing eyes, to catch a glimpse of your mouth and I, who had never been touched, tried to imagine what it might be like to have your mouth touch me. Falling in love with you in The Summer Garden in the white nights of Leningrad is the moment that propels me though life.”

“Do you see the Field of Mars, where I walked next to my bride in her white wedding dress, with red sandals in her hands, when we were kids?”“I see it well.”“We spent all our days afraid it was too good to be true, Tatiana,” said Alexander. “We were always afraid all we had was a borrowed five minutes from now.”Her hands went on his face. “That’s all any of us ever has, my love,” she said. “And it all flies by.”“Yes,” he said, looking at her, at the desert, covered coral and yellow with golden eye and globe mallow. “But what a five minutes it’s been.”

“He was breathing heavily. “I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong with you,” he said. “You’re telling me to pack my bags, to leave our house, knowing you’re going to have a baby?”“And this surprises you why? Have you seen what’s been happening in our house?”“Stop talking to me like this in our bed, Tatiana. My white flag is up,” said Alexander. “I have no more.”“My white flag is up, too, Shura,” she said. “You know when mine went up? June 22, 1941.”

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