Quotes from The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

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

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“Clancy comments that the subtleties of national character can impact the world stage by making espionage more difficult. Americans were quirky by nature, making the sorts of eccentric moves that had to be followed up on as potential espionage cues. Russians, on the other hand, were too orderly by nature to make such distractions appear natural.”
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“He didn’t say anything until we approached my trailer. “Truth be told, I was hoping for
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I ignored him and increased my pace again. After a few more steps, I had a small
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Dr. Bore would be proud of my mythology reference. Seth just threw his head back and
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He gently, but firmly, took my chin in his hand. “Methinks the lady doth protest too
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He did not just misquote Shakespeare to me!
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did. You know it and I know it.” His voice rumbled soft, low, and yummy. I yanked my
head free and walked up the small path to my porch.
“Sooner or later, Maggie, our lips will meet again. Personally, I’m voting for sooner.”
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Goodnight.” A twist of guilt clutched at my belly as he walked away.”
― Sherry Gammon, quote from Unlovable

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― Gustav Meyrink, quote from The Golem

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