I'll take your breath any way you give it to me, Shura.

I love you. I'm blind for you, wild for you. Sick with you. I told you that our first night together when I asked you to marry me, I am telling you now. Everything that's happened to us, everything, is because I crossed the street for you. I worship you. You know that through and through.

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.

I'll take your breath any way you give it to me, Shura.

I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.

Love is, to be loved,” said Alexander, “in return.

Up on the roof Tatiana thought about the evening minute, the minute she used to walk out the factory doors, turn her head to the left even before her body turned, and look for his face. The evening minute as she hurried down the street, her happiness curling her mouth upward to the white sky, the red wings speeding her to him, to look up at him and smile.