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.

I tend to be a great optimist when it comes to the United States and the American way of life, I think precisely because I wasn't born into it.

Awash in a flood of hostility and despair, they battled and railed and shattered their bodies on one another, unable to find one strand, one sobering swallow of solace.

Tatiana had imagined her Alexander since she was a child, before she believed that someone like him was even possible. When she was a little girl, she dreamed of a fine world in which a good man walked its winding roads, perhaps somewhere in his wandering soul searching for her.

Tatiana said. "Go on with Dasha. She is right for you. She is a woman and I'm-" "Blind!", Alexander exclaimed. Tatiana stood, desolately failing in the battle of her heart. "Oh, Alexander. What do you want from me..." "Everything", he whispered fiercely.

Tatiana realized she was too young to hide well what was in her heart but old enough to know that her heart was in her eyes.

And that's my point: all great things worth having require great sacrifice worth giving.