We can’t forget that I owe you my life.” She gazed at him. “We can’t forget that I belong to you.” “I like that sound of that,” Alexander said, hugging her tighter.

Falling in love with you in the Summer Garden in the white nights in Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.

Each day brought just another minute of the things they could not leave behind. Jane Barrington sitting on the train coming back to Leningrad from Moscow, holding on to her son, knowing she had failed him, crying for Alexander, wanting another drink, and Harold, in his prison cell, crying for Alexander, and Yuri Stepanov on his stomach in the mud in Finland, crying for Alexander, and Dasha in the truck, on the Ladoga ice, crying for Alexander, and Tatiana on her knees in the Finland marsh, screaming for Alexander, and Anthony, alone with his nightmares, crying for his father.

Dear God, Tatiana prayed in bed that night, turning to the wall and pulling the white sheet and the thin brown blanket over herself. If You are there somewhere, please teach me how to hide what I never knew how to show.

There is a very definite Russian heart in me; that never dies. I think you're born and you live your life with it and you die with it. I'm very much an American - my books tend to be about American things, but inside there's that sort of tortured, long-suffering, aching, constantly analysing Russian soul underneath the happy American exterior.

Will you remember that? Anywhere you are, if you can look up and find Perseus in the sky, find that smile, and hear the galactic wind whisper your name, you'll know that it's me, calling for you... calling you back to Lazarevo. (Alexander)

Whenever you're unsure of yourself, whenever you're in doubt, ask yourself three questions. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? but most important, ask yourself, what do you love?