The Kitchen Boy Quotes

“You see, my love. As you've always said, after the rain-"
Sun."
After the darkness-"
Light."
And after the illness-"
Health."
Exactly," said the Tsar. "We mustn't give up faith.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“On the other hand, he was compassionate because he knew pain, real pain, and real suffering too. Yet even in those bouts when it looked for sure as if he would die, he was never given morphine, not even as his screams of pain rattled the palace windows. That poor child had traveled to the bottom of life and back again, and naturally that had had a profound effect on him.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“Nikolai did not want to be rescued from that special house and restored to
the brilliancy of the Romanov throne, of this I am absolutely certain. If so
many of his people felt locked in the chains of poverty, then he felt
entrapped by the riches of the dynasty, which is to say that peasant and Tsar alike were liberated by the revolution.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“Although we suffer horribly still there is peace in our souls”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“Oh, as the tragedies of Shakespeare have revealed, the fall of kings is but fodder for the riches entertainments.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“So in the end this is how Nikolai II must be viewed: a very caring man of moderate abilities who, although utterly devoted to his country, was unable to transform the unworkable autocratic system thrust upon him. Period. That simple.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“One man, one person, cannot rule the hearts and minds of millions. Liberty, freedom, truth - this America can be such a silly place, so fickle and naive - sometimes to childish! - but it saves itself because of those first three things.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“It amazes me still to this day how quickly the empire fell to pieces. One day
the people are kissing the ground upon which the Tsar’s shadow has fallen, the
next they are hacking apart his body. Nikolai merely put down his scepter and
walked away, and literally overnight a three-hundred-year old dynasty
evaporated — poof, gone! — with no one lifting a finger to save it. Ironic
that the Soviet Union collapsed just as easily, which proves it was no better,
that the cure, kommunizm, was in fact far worse than the disease itself. Now,
I can only hope, those days are over, and just maybe that’s true. After all,
it took nearly one hundred years for the insanity to fade from France after
their revolution.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“while our Empress was cold on the outside, she was at the same time wildly passionate on the inside, and in this way very, very Russian.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“For very long periods I am really patient, and then out breaks my bad temper. It is not so difficult to bear great trials, but these little buzzing mosquitos are so trying.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“Forgive me. It's true. I wander. I wander in my heart and my thoughts. Such is the curse of any emigrant, to abandon one's home and never find another, to always flounder in a sea of remorse.”
― Robert Alexander, The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar