The Diamond Eye Quotes
"He stood with a pocketful of diamonds and a heart full of death, watching a Russian sniper shake hands with the First Lady of the United States."
"People trusted a southern accent, and they found themselves trusting the marksman: a loose-jointed man of medium height, medium hair between brown and blond, a bony face, and mud-colored eyes, usually jingling a clutter of uncut diamonds in his trouser pocket."
"When you’re a mother, panic can engulf you in the blink of an eyelash. All it takes is that instant when your eye sweeps a room for your child and doesn’t find him."
"Any Soviet citizen already spent entirely too much time waiting in lines as it was!"
"There’s nothing a woman won’t put up with to keep her babies fed."
"Life has a rapid pace, but not through telescopic sights—something is always receding into the background or coming into the foreground, so you must gain the whole picture through the tiniest of details."
"No matter how hard the metal, it yields to human strength. Everything does. All you have to do is devise the right weapon."
"This beautiful world. This nighttime wonder that was my city, my country."
"There are things my homeland can apologize for. We have a long way to go, and we train ourselves to see not the world around us, but the world as it will become."
"What use is it being angry? whispered the voice of doubt inside me as I stared out at the calm water."
"No matter how hard the metal, I’d told Vika that afternoon, it yields to human strength. All you have to do is devise the right weapon."
"In times of war, fathers go fight for their children."
"All you need in war is dry socks, a good pair of boots, and something to read."
"There is a sameness to how war stories begin."
"My memoir, the unofficial version: When I arrived at the front, it was a complete and utter disaster and so was I, because I’d gone to war without saying goodbye to my son."
"My memoir, the official version: Every woman remembers her first. My memoir, the unofficial version: Those words mean very different things for me than most women."
"Darling morzhik, I will help you learn all about trees and plants. Your mamochka is never too busy for you, even at the front!"
"Somehow I had to be the woman who wrote both kinds of letters and did not fail at either."
"You’re no longer a private, but a corporal. Congratulations."
"For one, you’ll need to find yourself a partner."
"Not to lurk around your bath, ladies, but one of the corporals just came by and left a rather nice pile of gifts for L. M. Pavlichenko."
"My job now was to take lives—I sometimes forgot that I was also saving them."
"I hadn’t found anyone I wanted at my back longer than one night’s sortie."
"You are asking too, aren’t you? All right. Come with me."
"Husbands, as I have had cause to know, cannot always be trusted."
"I shot five when my squad ambushed three motorcycles with sidecars."
"What we need is killers. At least we have you."
"As long as they paid promptly and kept their mouths shut, none of the rest mattered."
"I need to establish myself on the fringes of this delegation as a security-vetted and innocuous part of the scenery."
"They’re suits... Men in expensive suits who want the world to run in their favor."
"My memoir, the unofficial version: That rot-gut, oily-tongued bastard turned up in the middle of the war like what the Americans would call a bad penny."
"Unlike doctors, I don’t operate safe behind the lines."
"One hundred and eighty-seven dead enemies know I’m no joke."
"The forest is like a temple: observe the old customs, be respectful, don’t kill for amusement, and the woods will reward you for it."
"Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm."
"So I can steal a kiss... Last time you kissed me. I feel I should return the favor."
"I used to think that no one could beat Soviet men for endless speeches, but when I came to America, I realized men of all nationalities like the sound of their own voices, especially the kind of man who spends long hours behind a podium."
"I made a quick escape when the assembly was dismissed. Somehow I knew Alexei would be looking for me—he’d have lined me up like a trick shot the moment he saw me step forward to make my speech."
"In other words, I must be ugly and unusual. I said it with a grin, because I was feeling anything but ugly right now."
"A woman sniper with two hundred marks in her tally—it conjures up a very specific image. And you . . . I match your imaginings? Not in the slightest."
"If I decided to head for the Russian front, I imagine my husband would simply say, ‘Don’t get yourself killed, Eleanor, and bring back some Nazi scalps for the office.’"
"Don’t be a coward, I lashed myself fiercely, but I didn’t think it was cowardice, precisely. Put a Hitlerite in my sights, I knew I wouldn’t freeze pulling the trigger."
"You can be cautious or you can be good, and I’m very good."
"Life was decided in an instant—by a mere second, she beat him to the shot."
"You shoot Iron Cross sharpshooters through the eye socket for a living; don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little public speaking."
"It’s been a month since you started here with me. A month in front-line time? That’s a year in peacetime."
"The only real difference in our lives, Lyudmila Mikhailovna, is that instead of asking ‘How many Nazis did you kill today?’ I’d be asking ‘How many footnotes did you annotate today?’"
"I have no intention of gathering further data. No interest at all in seeing Kostia or old Vartanov in a skirt."
"Women are bloodthirsty creatures. The English and Americans are utter fools if they think females are too delicate to send to the front."
"We look like brides making garlands, but with more khaki."
"Being in love is good for my shooting. I swear, every bullet zings along the right trajectory when I know I’m coming home to you."
"The world of silence and darkness was where we lived."
"I went to sleep every night aching for Lyonya, and I think I always will."
"If I hadn’t dragged my damned heels on my divorce for so long, I’d be calling myself Kitsenko instead."
"My mother’s eyes were the size of saucers when she laid eyes on it—and me."
"I am proud to wear the uniform of my army. It has been soaked by the blood of my comrades who have fallen in combat."
"When I take aim at something, I do not miss."
"I want you to leave me alone, because I will never, ever, ever take you back."
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
"Everyone fails, Lyudmila. I’ve failed. My husband has failed—you think all his New Deal proposals were dazzling successes? He has proposed initiatives that have fallen flat; he has espoused positions for which he has rightly been condemned; he has hosts of enemies who would happily see him dead."
"If at first one doesn’t succeed . . . well, I’ll spare you the somewhat obnoxious little rhyme I learned in childhood, but trying again is something we Yanks believe in very strongly."
"The world won’t smite you for the occasional misfire."
"It isn’t enough to believe in equality and peace and human rights—one must work at it."
"Life can be hard for us. We have to laugh at it."
"Gentlemen, I am twenty-six years old. At the front, I have already eliminated 309 fascist soldiers and officers. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding for too long behind my back?"
"I’m the one with friends in high places now, and I will make you stop stalling."
"You’re my partner. You’re my shadow. My other half. I trust you like no one else in this world."
"I want white nights, Kostia. I want ponchiki in a paper cone, all dusted with sugar."
"Yes, the marksman thought—he had definitely let curiosity get the better of strict professionalism on this job."
"This turn of events was going somewhere, he could feel it."
"Weeks of dead ends and failed plans were all leading here."
"Just looking to make a little trouble for America’s Soviet sweetheart."
"The truth: My last trip to the White House was not quite that uneventful."
"There it is, thought the marksman. And leaned closer."
"I couldn’t read his face. I knew him so well and I couldn’t read his face."
"Are you quite all right, Lyudmila?" the First Lady asked in a low tone.
"He’d probably decided he’d come out on top of it all."
"To Lyudmila with great love from W. P. Jonson."
"I will not miss hot dogs, or your press—But I will miss you, Eleanor."
"An eye like a diamond, yes. But a heart—for friendship."
"His luck was back; the marksman could feel it."
"Maybe he was old-fashioned. You gave a woman a present, after all, when you took her on a date."
"The forest is like a temple, I remembered Vartanov saying. Be respectful, and the woods will reward you."
"And with every step toward the trees, I felt my sniper self filling me back up."
"A woman who wore a lynx pelt like the predator she was."
"My shot took him clean through the right eye."
"When did they stop coming? When would I look around and see no one advancing to kill me?"
"Everything I’d learned in a year at the front told me not to stop and scream, but to run in silence."
"You dreamed of making your name famous, Alexei? You dreamed it would be known from Moscow to Vladivostok?"
"Either way, he didn’t have to share the glory with me, and he was free of his bitch wife."
"How does it feel? Knowing that the Pavlichenko recorded in the history books won’t be you?"
"No one was saying anything about President Roosevelt or a hullabaloo at the White House, and that told me he was safe."
"My glowering minder made to get into the elevator with me, and I put out my hand again. 'Yuri,' I said mildly, 'no.'"
"Tonight I’d survived two duels, countless minor injuries, and a seven-kilometer midnight walk on my shredded feet—yet the thing that nearly felled me was arriving at my hotel room two floors up and realizing I had no idea where the key was."
"He was warm against me, granite-solid and night-silent in his dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up."
"I’m here," he said quietly, and that was all.
"I killed Alexei," I repeated, stark and plain, not having to care if there were ears listening in this room.
"Your husband has enemies who want him dead. I’d taken care of one, but I was leaving American shores."
"Perhaps Eleanor’s lesson had finally sunk home: the knowledge that even if I’d missed, I’d have gotten up, fired again, kept going until I succeeded."
"Mrs. Roosevelt, may I present Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Hero of the Soviet Union."