“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.”

“The sunshine filtered in through the billowing white curtains. Tatiana knew there would be only an instant, a brief flicker of time that bathed her with the possibilities of the day. In a moment it would all be gone. And in a moment it was. Still...that sun streaking through the room, the distant rumble of buses through the open window, the slight wind. This was the part of Sunday that Tatiana loved most: the beginning.”

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

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

“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”

“If I can live through this, he thought, I can live through anything. If I can live through this, I WILL live through anything.”