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.

They had no past. They had no future. They just were.

There are some battles, no matter how much you don’t want to fight them, that you just have to fight. That are worth giving your life for.

Lazarevo drips you into my soul, dawn drop by moonlight drop from the river Kama. When you look for me, look for me there, because that's where I'll be all the days of my life.

This is days and days and months and years and all the minutes in between, just you me.

....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.

When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.