Russian Tattoo Quotes

“Along with all those who left their countries for other shores, I belong in neither land. We are unmoored and disconnected, like these poplar seeds blown into the crevices of the buildings, into the corners of the world.”
― Elena Gorokhova, Russian Tattoo: A Memoir

“I still know this place and its people to the marrow of their bones, to their soft, unguarded core, which had once sustained my own life, yet I am as much of an outsider here as I am on the other side of the world, in my adopted country. The truth is that there is no bridge between the two lives - the past and the present - that would conveniently span the memory of loss and the promise of an onward search. There is only a wound, the inner divide of exile. A daughter of an anatomy professor, I should have known that sliced hearts do not become whole, that split souls do not mend. Along with all those who left their countries for other shores, I belong in neither land.”
― Elena Gorokhova, Russian Tattoo: A Memoir

“You have to learn to play the hand you've been dealt," Andy reminds me in his therapist voice. "Stop wishing for another hand.”
― Elena Gorokhova, Russian Tattoo: A Memoir

“Cut yourself free of what you love and hope that the wound heals. —J.”
― Elena Gorokhova, Russian Tattoo: A Memoir