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Virginia in August feels very much to Anna as though she has taken up residence directly in the white-hot center of Satan’s armpit.
I can’t remember.” It’s a lie, of course. Anna does not forget. Her memory is as sound and as solid as a gun safe. And just as impenetrable.
I’ve never realized before how clearly men need leaders. How adrift we are without them and how the mere sight of one can breathe courage into a room.
the only thing I feel at this pronouncement is anger. I am like my father in that way, I fear. Anger first, reason second.
Ernest Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg.”
A thousand truths are written across the body during any given conversation, and they often say more than the words spoken aloud.
The trust that Anna places in Gleb is similar to the trust she places in a chair. She believes that he will be there to support her because he has been there for so long doing that very thing. If the legs are wobbly, she tries not to think about it much because it’s the only chair she has.
“Well?” he demands, eager for an argument. Imperiousness is our only weapon and we use it to good effect, refusing to acknowledge his pronouncement. Tatiana and I regard him with every bit of disinterest we can muster. There are ways to make a man like Semyon feel small. You look at him with pity—it’s far more effective than disdain. You cooperate with his demands but in a way that makes him feel you’re only doing so because he is weak and must be cosseted. The goal is to make him hate himself for being a man unworthy of respect. We learned all these techniques in the years we spent in the
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“I hate beer.” And she does. All her years of drinking have not changed this absolute reality. Beer tastes like horse piss marinated in despair.
There is nothing artistic about rape. Taking a woman by force makes a man no better than the rooster in Tobolsk. It simply makes him an animal.
“We can only know that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
It is that early, nebulous hour before dawn when the sky can’t make up its mind what color it wants to be and you don’t know whether it is today, tomorrow, or perhaps yesterday.
The painting is supposed to be a landscape but it’s mottled and juvenile. She wonders if he painted it himself. He seems like the sort of man who would celebrate feeble attempts.
This is how the human heart beats, a twisted staccato of love and envy, of anger and relief.
You wanted to believe that I was Anastasia.
