“To lead a life so wholly happy, so wholly unexamined that she could be dying, could be betrayed, could be besieged on all sides and never even know it.”

“Tatiana lived for that evening hour with him that propelled her into her future and into the barely formed, painful feelings that she could neither express nor understand. Friends walking in the lucent dusk. There was nothing more she could have from him, and there was nothing more she wanted from him but that one hour at the end of her long day when her heart beat and her breath was short and she was happy.”

“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.”

“Here, take this, she would say, take this, and tell me where he is. Tell me whether he's dead or alive, so I can walk as his widow or his wife.No one would, or could, tell her, and so she continued to cook, and to learn new things all the while searching for an answer among the outcasts. The way he carried his body, the way he walked in my life, Tatiana thought, declared that he was the only man I had ever loved, and he knew it.And until I was alone without him, I thought it was all worth it.”

“I think you kept three credits, consciously or subconsciously, so that you could hang on to something, hang on and not move forward. I think you want to feel that you’re still unfinished.” She wanted to tell her grandmother that she was still unfinished. Unfinished, unanswered, unformed.”

“All she had to do was stay where she was, go on as she was.But there was no Tatiana here. Tatiana remained with Alexander. Her arms were around him in LakeLadoga, where she lay down with him every night. Her arms were holding him bleeding out into the LakeLadoga ice. She could have let go of him then, could have given him to God; God was certainly callingfor him.But she didn’t.And because she didn’t, she was here in America, sitting on the ledge of the rest of her life. It certainlyfelt that way, that seminal moment where she knew that whatever her decision, her life would take eitherone course or it would take another.One way the path was plain and vivid.And the other was black and fraught with doubt”

“All nations were different. The Russians were unparalleled in their suffering, the English in their reserve, the Americans in their love of life, the Italians in their love of Christ, and the French in their hope of love. So when they made the dress for Tatiana, they made it full of promise. They made it as if to tell her, put it on, chérie, and in this dress you, too, shall be loved as we have loved; put it on and love shall be yours. And so Tatiana never despaired in her white dress with red roses. Had the Americans made it, she would have been happy. Had the Italians made it, she would have started praying, had the British made it, she would have squared her shoulders, but because the French had made it, she never lost hope.”