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.

If there is God, I thought...Please some day let me make love to this girl while she wears that dress." "Oh..." "Tatiasha...isn't it nice to know there is a God?

Tania, there is so much still ahead of you. Be patient with life

Courage, Alexan­der,” she whis­pered. “Courage, Ta­tiana.

Please stop looking at me, she thought, afraid of his eyes and terrified of her own heart.

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

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.