"It is a most dreadful, agonizing fear of something I cannot define, something unfathomable and non-existent in the normal course of events, but which may at any given moment materialize and confront me as an unquestionable, terrible, ghastly and implacable reality, making a mockery of all evidence of reason."
“I thank you, oh God, for everything, everything, for your wrath and for your mercy!… For your sun too, which has now cast its light on us after the storm! I thank you for this moment of joy! No matter that we are humiliated, no matter that we are insulted, but we are together again – and let, let the proud and the arrogant people who have humiliated and insulted us gloat over their triumph! Let them cast stones at us! Have no fear, Natasha… We shall go hand in hand, and I shall say to them, ‘This is my dearly beloved daughter, my daughter without sin whom you have humiliated and insulted, but whom I love and bless for ever and ever!…’”