Top 100 Paullina Simons Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “He hugged her. “Be strong for me, Tatiana,” Alexander said hoarsely. “Save yourself for me.” “That’s what I do, Shura,” Tatiana said. “I save myself for you.” Alexander bent to her, but she couldn’t even look up. He kissed the top of her hat. They held on for a few more seconds.”

— Paullina Simons

52. “This is days and days and months and years and all the minutes in between, just you me.”

— Paullina Simons

53. “Shura, I’m going to die.”

— Paullina Simons

54. “What strength he once possessed had left his body and gone to a tiny girl with freckles.”

— Paullina Simons

55. “Daughters are supposed to be friends to their mothers in their old age.”

— Paullina Simons

56. “In Alexander’s life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long as I am, you are permanent, soldier.”

— Paullina Simons

57. “To live as a child in a world without time – not in infinity, but in eternity, what a joy. To never count your minutes. To just be – in the eternal present. What bliss.”

— Paullina Simons

58. “Memory – that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort.”

— Paullina Simons

59. “The sponge of my heart had been filled up sometime last evening and had begun to drip.”

— Paullina Simons

60. “Tania, last time in Morozovo, I let you go, but not this time. This time we live together or we die together.”

— Paullina Simons

61. “The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.”

— Paullina Simons

62. “What does it mean to be human, to be good, to be moral, to be all three at once? It means that flawed beings often must choose between two flawed options.”

— Paullina Simons

63. “It was a perfect day. For five minutes there was no war, and it was just a glorious Sunday in a Leningrad June. When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.”

— Paullina Simons

64. “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

65. “I wish I could spend six years writing one novel.”

— Paullina Simons

66. “You have amazing gifts. Don’t squander them. Don’t give them out meaninglessly, don’t abuse them, don’t take them for granted. You are the weapon you carry with you till the day you die. -Tatiana and Alexander.”

— Paullina Simons

67. “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

68. “I didn’t know how to live my life, and suddenly I was thrust into it and had no choice but to live it.”

— Paullina Simons

69. “Tania, we desperately need to have a minute,” he said. “And you know it.” She knew it. “This isn’t right.” “It’s the only thing that’s right.” “All right. Go.” “Will you come?” “I will try. Now, go.” “Lift your – ” Before he stopped speaking, Tatiana raised her face to him. They kissed deeply. “Do you have any idea what I feel?” Alexander whispered, his hands in her hair. “No,” Tatiana replied, holding on to him, her legs numb. “I only have an idea what I feel.”

— Paullina Simons

70. “La memoria... esa cruel enemiga del consuelo.”

— Paullina Simons

71. “You know that we all need one other person. One other person to remind us we are still human beings and not beasts.”

— Paullina Simons

72. “He was new. Transcendentally new. Immemorially new. She had thought all the while that their instant familiarity was based on the things she understood- compassion, empathy, fondness, friendship. Two people resoundingly coming together. Needing to sit close together on the tram, to bump into each other, to make each other laugh. Needing each other. Needing happiness. Needing youth.”

— Paullina Simons

73. “He sent you to redeem me, to comfort me, and to heal me – and that’s just so far,” he added with a smile.”

— Paullina Simons

74. “Her once twinkling green eyes set deep into the pale features looked as if they were the only ghastly crystal barriers between strangers and her soul.”

— Paullina Simons

75. “Hold your head high, and if you’re going to go down, go down knowing you have not in any way compromised your soul.”

— Paullina Simons

76. “The struggle doesn’t end just because you know the way. That’s when it’s only beginning.”

— Paullina Simons

77. “And then, because she was Tatiana and because she couldn’t help herself, and because he wouldn’t have it any other way, she ran to him and was in his arms.”

— Paullina Simons

78. “I saved you for me.”

— Paullina Simons

79. “Tatia, let me take care of you.” He stopped and took a breath.”

— Paullina Simons

80. “When Tatiana had been a child in Luga, her beloved Deda, seeing her depressed one summer and unable to find her way, said to her, ‘Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: what do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important – ask, what do you love?”

— Paullina Simons

81. “I could have lived through it all if only I continued to have the feeling that at the end of childhood, at the end of adolescence, there was something else in this life that would be mine, that I could make with my bare hands, and once I had made it, I could say, I did this to my life. I made my life so.”

— Paullina Simons

82. “Sometimes the beast needs to be loved before it can be lovable. Love her in her sin, that’s what divine love means. Love her with the highest form of love on earth. Love everything. Then you will see mystery in everything.”

— Paullina Simons

83. “I know how it works, Esther. I graduated from Harvard.” “Book-smart, but life-stupid,” said Esther.”

— Paullina Simons

84. “Alexander was suffocating under the weight of his love.”

— Paullina Simons

85. “Tatiana and the soldier were having a silence.”

— Paullina Simons

86. “A good man has as much chance of dying as a bad one. Maybe more so.”

— Paullina Simons

87. “What little I had was all for you. It was you who was everybody else’s. But I was only yours.”

— Paullina Simons

88. “Tania.” Her voice was soothing. “There is a second love. And a third love. And if you’re lucky, a fourth and a fifth, too.”

— Paullina Simons

89. “We’ve had a minute, Tatiana thought. We had our minutes on the bus. And at Kirov. We had our minutes in Lugo. And in the Summer Garden. Breathless minutes, we had. What we want, she thought, keeping herself from welling up, is eternity.”

— Paullina Simons

90. “With my writing, because I live it, I have to be consumed by it, and that means you have to forget your other life, which is constantly pulling you from your work.”

— Paullina Simons

91. “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.”

— Paullina Simons

92. “All nations were different. The Russians were unparalleled in their suffering, the English in their reserve, the Americans in their love of life, the Italians in their love of Christ, and the French in their hope of love.”

— Paullina Simons

93. “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.”

— Paullina Simons

94. “She hadn’t meant to do it. Falling this crashingly in love with Spencer didn’t take Lily by accident. It took her by storm.”

— Paullina Simons

95. “I will make you insane, her memory screamed at her near the winter window sill as Tatiana smelled the brine of eternity. On the outside you will walk and smile as if indeed you are a normal woman, but on the inside you will twist and burn on the stake, I will never free you, you will never be free.”

— Paullina Simons

96. “All Alexander hears is his mother pleading, screaming, crying into the closed face of the consulate guard, as he keeps trying to pull her away, Please please please help him, we have money, a place to live, help him, help him, help him –.”

— Paullina Simons

97. “It wasn’t this soldier’s uniform that affected her, and it wasn’t his looks. It was the way he had stared at her from across the street, separated from her by ten meters of concrete, a bus, and the electric wires of the tram line.”

— Paullina Simons

98. “All grimy and sweaty, Alexander drew her to him, his palms on her back, and bending to her and tilting his head, whispered into her mouth, “Tatiasha, I know you won’t believe this, but if I’m looking at the sheets when I’m making love to you, we’ve got a bigger problem than what damn color they are.”

— Paullina Simons

99. “Alexander shows Anthony how he crouches and she climbs on his shoulders; he straightens up, holding on to her hands and then lets go, and she also straightens up and balances, standing on top of his shoulders for a long moment before pushing off his trapezoid in a nearly perfect, splashless forward dive. Mom, says Anthony, looking impressed, where did you and Dad learn to do that? And Dad, glancing at Mom in the water, says, Lazarevo.”

— Paullina Simons

100. “Dasha bent him to her and kissed him on the mouth. And kissed him and kissed him. And kissed him.”

— Paullina Simons