Lucia

“Well, that’s one of the paradoxes of life. You can’t have it all. You can have some of this and some of that or all of this and none of that. We make the trade-offs we think are best at the time.”
― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

“Soldier! Let me cradle your head and caress your face, let me kiss your dear sweet lips and cry across the seas and whisper through the icy Russian grass how I feel for you . . . Luga, Ladoga, Leningrad, Lazarevo . . . Alexander, once you carried me, and now I carry you. Into my eternity, now I carry you.

Through Finland, through Sweden, to America, hand outstretched, I stand and limp forward, the galloping steed black and riderless in my wake. Your heart, your rifle, they will comfort me, they’ll be my cradle and my grave.

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 will be all the days of my life. (Tatiana)”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“A bus came. The soldier turned away from her and walked toward it. Tatiana watched him. Even his walk was from another world; the step was too sure, the stride too long, yet somehow it all seemed right, looked right, felt right. It was like stumbling on a book you thought you had lost. Ah, yes, there it is.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Tatiana: I found my true love on Ulita Saltykov-Schedrin, while I sat on a bench eating ice cream.
Alexander: You didn't find me. You weren't even looking for me. I found you.
Long pause.
Tatiana: Alexander, we're you .... looking for me ?
Alexander: All my life.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman