The Bronze Horseman Quotes

“Alexander, were you looking for me?"
"All my life.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: What do believe in? What do you hope for? What do you love?”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Tatiana: "Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?"
Alexander: "That wasn't fighting, Tatiana. That was foreplay.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Good-bye, my moonsong and my breath, my white nights and golden days, my fresh water and my fire. Good-bye, and may you find a better life, find comfort again and your breathless smile, and when your beloved face lights up once more at the Western sunrise, be sure what I felt for you was not in vain. Good-bye and have faith, my Tatiana.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Please don't die," she whispered. "I don't think I can bury
you. I already buried everyone else."

"How can I die," Alexander said, his voice breaking, "when you
have poured your immortal blood into me?”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“There are some battles, no matter how much you don’t want to fight them, that you just have to fight. That are worth giving your life for.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“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.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“I love you breathlessly, my amazing man.”
― 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

“What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania.
“She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—”
“Where did she get it from?”
“Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.”
Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut.
Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.”
Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound.
He was barely breathing.
“The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so
low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a
catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her
draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in
her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure,
told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out
of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage,
to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Love is,” she repeated slowly, looking only at Dasha, “when he is hungry and you feed him. Love is knowing when he is hungry”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“I want you to know that should something happen to me, don’t worry about my body. My soul isn’t going to return to it, nor to God. It’s flying straight to you, where it knows it can find you, in Lazarevo. I want to be neither with kings nor heroes, but with the queen of Lake Ilmen.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Love is, to be loved,” said Alexander, “in return.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“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

“He stared at her fists and at her face and said with upset incredulity, "You promised me you would forgive me-"
"Forgive you,"Tatiana hissed through her teeth, tears streaming down her face, "for your brave and indifferent face, Alexander!" She groaned in pain. "Not for your brave and indifferent heart.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“They had no past. They had no future. They just were.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“I saved you for me.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“You will find a way to live without me. You will find a way to live for both of us,' Alexander said to Tatiana as the swelling Kama River flowed from the Ural Mountains through a pine village named Lazarevo, once when they were in love, and young.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Alexander tilted his head and kissed her deeply on the lips. He let go of her hands, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. They kissed as if in a fever... they kissed as if the breath were leaving their bodies.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Tatiana...you and I had only one moment..." said Alexander. "A single moment in time, in your time and mine...one instant, when another life could have still been possible." He kissed her lips. "Do you know what I'm talking about?"
When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.
"I know that moment," whispered Tatiana.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“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.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Some words were like that. Whole lives attached to them. Ghosts and lives and ecstasy and sorrow.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Alexander knew that before he had light instead of darkness, he had to deserve light instead of darkness.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“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?”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“Shura...are you...in love with me?"
"Turn to me," Alexander said. She turned. "Tatia, I worship you. I'm crazy in love with you. I want you to marry me.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“I'm not hungry," Alexander whispered. "I'm famished. Watch out for me. Now, don't make a single sound," he said, moving on top of her. "Tania, God....I'll cover your mouth, just like this, and you hold on to me, just like this, and I'm going to-just like this-”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman

“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.”
― Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman