Aleksandr Voinov Quotes

Right now he was nothing but a physically hurt man who had been through hell and back, clinging to his promise. "We be ... together. More than just ... few ... hours. Wanna die ... with you. Not ... alone." Fought to stay awake, needed to spend every second with Vadim while he could.
Vadim kissed that hand again, looked up. "We won't die. We'll never die. I promise. He'd promise anything, meant it, would die defending this man, would live and die and suffer for him.

You really do love him, don't you?" she said quietly.
Vadim blinked, then looked to the side, without seeing colours and patterns, but it helped him find words. Speaking about love without cliché, without borrowing somebody else's well-worn words that were too comfortable. "Dan changed me in ways that stripped away the man I wanted to be, and the man I was made to be, and the man I was expected to be. He skinned me alive, and left only…..somebody who…." He breathed but barely. "…can live and die now, like a human being, not an automation, not somebody else's creation. Dan took my fear of death. I can't die now. I know I'm immortal."

"Immortal?" she said quietly, sitting still. "Your soul? Your being?"

"I don't believe there's anything like a soul. But I believe most people are asleep. They aren't even aware what they are, or that they are alive. And we are all scared to die, so when it happens we scream for our mothers and clutch our guts because we're scared. I'm not. I'm not afraid of death. The only thing I'm afraid of is losing Dan." But if that happens, he thought, Dan might just keep the promise and kill him on the way out.

Knighthood. Was he even worthy? Just a little while ago, he'd have answered yes without a doubt, but now, facing the cross and his own desires, he wasn't so sure. Courage, loyalty, obedience, faith. If even a man like Ulric could act against those virtues, then they were not something one possessed, but something to be constantly guarded and reclaimed.

They sat like this for a long, long time. Until the air grew cold and the stone tiles icy, and until Dan's body protested with stiffness and increasing aches. Sitting, in silence, just holding, and unable to make sence, when the only thing that made sense was the touch.

What sins I commit, I commit them in the open.

You broke me up there in the mountains. You cracked something in my head, I don't know. I have never been obsessed with another person before or after. You just drilled your way in and since then, I've been yours. You got to a place that I didn't know existed ... and all that has changed me, taken the stuff away I thought was true about me. In some weird, weird way, started something that turned me into more than a goodlooking bastard.

I understand how not even a priest can resist you when you want him. I can understand how love is something horrible and complex and hurting and something that still happens even if it shouldn't, and can't, and how one can want to be somebody else's world. I get it. And it fucking hurts.

When you're like this, Vadim, I want to own you, and taste you, burrow all the way into your body until I feel so much it fucking hurts and your scent clings to every pore. I want to hurt you, tear you apart, fuck you until you plead and scream and bleed, and all that, because I can never get enough of you.

Kendras licked his lips. "Your Highness."
The officer laughed."You make that sound dirty.

Sometimes history is just an excuse for incompetence at getting along with each other.

Silvio said with a fond smile. "That was when I knew you meant it."
"Meant what?"
"That you care about me." Silvio took the helmet again and stared at it like a postmodern Hamlet. "Franco told you about Toppolino. You remembered. I knew you cared about me."
"Of course I do. I love you, Silvio." He didn't cringe inwardly when Silvio's answer wasn't the one his wife gave him immediately. Silvio wasn't good at this, and he accepted it.
Silvio smiled and turned toward the door. "Same thing.

Take me on R&R, aye? Back to where we were before, or a similar place. Sea, sky, sun, and sex 24/7. Deal?' ... 'Make that 12/7 - getting old.

Once you know what you want, you can make the rest happen

No time for books, no patience. What good would they do? They don't tell you how to survive."
"No, they don't do that. They are reason, not tool." Vadim smirked. "They hold more truth than Pravda. Politburo can't lie in Pushkin. Pushkin was there before we became Soviets. It means ... if we have past, we have future." ( ... ) "At least I know that there are many truths. It's about learning to think different thoughts. Know things that you never felt. You could know what being rich feels like, or being in love, without ever getting real feeling.

More weapons hidden on his body than hallelujah-singing angels, dangling from a Christmas tree.

Ask me again when you're inside me, and I might even whisper the truth.

Love as inevitable as death.

You'd be quite sane and well-adjusted if your family had happened to somebody else

You're a funny man. Always ready to fall for somebody who's being nice to you. I'd watch that. That's a trait that invites disaster.

Train as if you had to bring the horse down, not the rider. Fight bulls, not men, and men won't best you.

Half of love is restraint. Patience and respect. Don't waste your time on the unworthy.

A gentle, warm, sweet pain spreads through my chest at those words.

The general will be joining us, shortly.
[..] A Revision officer dropping the brother in front of a rank was the most threatening thing Sergei had heard in a long time. He stared at Nikishin, tried to read his features, but that was entirely impossible. Never before had Nikishin appeared more the arm of the law.

I think it sometimes takes me a while, but I end up making good decisions at some point. Pretty much when I have exhausted all other options.

Love can be like a commanding officer. It's unfair, random, cruel, but it gets you through the war, somehow, gets you where you have to be. (Vadim)

Dan's voice was rough and low as he murmured against Vadim's lips. 'I hate you, Russkie.' No. He didn't, but he couldn't find the right word for this. This feeling. Hatred was the closest he could get. The alternative was still unthinkable.

I don't want to be one of many stations you pass through." Paused, "I want to be the central station." He fell silent.

V: Have you ever loved without wanting?
D: No. I have only ever wanted, never loved.

Sergei remembered well how unsettled Nikishin had been by the arm and leg that day. Then, it had made him sneer inwardly, but it was difficult to maintain that derision since he began to like the man. Trust him even. And that could be dangerous enough, laws being what they were, Nikishin being who he was. Never mind that any normal individual would be revolted by Sergei's current physical state, and justifiably so. Cyborg patchwork over mangled flesh. The pinnacle of attractive. He'd always been different, a freak. Now it was just visible. Impossible to hide.

Aye, that's me. Rough tough squaddie with the intellectual depth of a shallow baby bath and the educational background of a hedgerow. Complicated? Yeah, right." Dan laughed.
Vadim laughed, too. "Sorry, but that just about nails it." He grew more serious and whispered. "But you also have the heart of a tiger and the vastness of a mountain.

Men kill you, but women eviscerate you first.

It had all been a motherfucking nightmare and the solution was so simple, right there and under their noses. It had just been hidden: love. Fair and square. Just love.

Knowing what Dan's face had looked like in Kabul, the night they'd spent in the hotel room. What he'd said. My light, my life, my sanity, my love. Nothing of that had been wrong. Not the sex, the kisses, the teenager oaths of staying together, always, rain, shine, life, death. I'd die for you. Live for me. Hold me. Fucking hold me.

All men die, Kendras. Better get used to it. And then fight until the end, with every breath, every heartbeat, every single, last thought.

We race towards something so amazing and precious it strikes me dumb with its immenseness. I lose every sense of myself, every thought; there's just emotion and utter fulfillment.

There was simply no alternative to Dan, and the thought of that breaking or fading made him sick to his stomach.
"You're all I have, Dan. Every bit." (Vadim)

Our scars tell our suffering, not our weakness.
(Graukar)

I sit, smoking, my head against the cool comfort of the fighter plane's wheel, its wing shielding but never embracing me. I'm a cold nestling tonight.

Lately, the thought of tomorrow is like the thought of a hundred years into the future. Who can imagine that Germany will still exist?

So that's what I am about? Keeping you together?" Dan turned to face Vadim, and he was pale under the tan. "Keeping you alive? What the fuck happened to the touches in the cave, to the vows and the cutting, to the one fucking big thing that isn't about need and doing but about being? What the fuck happened to the love?" He shook his head, agitated, and damn, this was painful all of sudden. "I don't want to be needed. I want to be loved, for fuck's sake.

I want to learn his body, find every pleasure it's hiding. All this reverence and simple awe I feel when I touch him, feel his breath brush my skin.

Once upon a time there was a Scottish SAS soldier in Kabul. He met a Soviet Spetsnaz soldier. They were enemies first, then shagged for nine years, fell in love at some stage. Dragons, battles, and damsels in distress in between, until an evil wizard took the Spetsnaz away. The Scot and the damsel battled the vile foes, until the Russian returned, but the evil spell still hat him in its claws. More dragons, battles, knights in not-so shiny armour later, the spell got broken, the Princes got reunited, and our Russian and Scotsman kind of lived happily ever after. (Dan)

I've never woken to another's body in the same bed, not since I was a child. There is something about it that makes waking up alone seem unnatural. Man is not meant to be alone, yet men like us (or maybe men like me) appear to be lonelier than others.

... I agree with two things: the steppe is wide - even though I've never been there, and the mountains, fuck, yes, the mountains are a thing for themselves. They eat you up, swallow you whole, digest and churn around until their loneliness spits you back out again and you think that nothing else matters. Just them, and that tiny handful of life that's your own. Fucking insignificant. Nothing, no one, barely remembered, except perhaps for a moment of recognition in a goddamned teahouse." He shut up, suddenly, had said too much.
Vadim flashed a smile. "You're my favourite enemy, too. Fucking messy Brit.

Does a man work harder for being unhappy, unfulfilled? Is he less dedicated to his job, if he is allowed to commit himself for a life to another man instead of a woman?

Whatever you want, Sergei. Mike meant what he said beyond the immediate context, but found he was unable to put it into words. They wouldn't come. They had no form. Whatever it was didn't even have a tangible emotion to be labeled.

It means heart's solace. Where my heart finds peace.

I've only ever really been afraid of the fear, but right now, I fear nothing.

This way, at least, we get to meet and kill interesting people.

All paradises have gates," Falchi said. "You'd wonder why God made Paradise with an exit if he didn't anticipate having to use it eventually.

I try not to think of the future. What we have now is good. Any mlre of this is just a bonus. (Sergei)

Hatred had blossomed from the vine of contempt in his heart, flowers of dark, grim splendor.

Tiger and mountain lion. Fuck you. Fuck you for getting me out. You should have shot me. But you didn't have the guts to do it. Too weak. You just didn't care enough. You waited two years, and then you fucking stopped caring and tore out my fucking heart. Come on. Promises, Dan. Keep them. Cut it out. If you're a man.

He could sense Kshar underneath, and he knew he'd be able to sense him in whatever body. Unchanged, genuinely him.

You're my home. I will find you.

I thought I was better than you." He felt too much, was tearing himself open with all this, but nine years deserved all his pain. "How wrong was I." Vadim reached behind him to touch Dan's neck.
"I wanted you even then. And I was ... curious. I tried to ... get into your mind, and instead let you in. Not good, and yet best thing I've done in this whole war."
"Best thing I've done in all my life".

I need you." He could not go any further down. Rock bottom. And at the very bottom was just this one thing. The core of it all. "Fucking ... love you ... too much.

I tried that too, you know. After ... my family was murdered, and I was waiting for justice, I tried to hide inside a bottle. But some men, Tony, [..] are not small enough to fit into a bottle.

Described as a "workaholic speed-writing freak" by fellow writers, a "creative writing class drill sergeant" by his writing 'padawans', Voinov is a self-confessed geek and has enlarged his days by 12 secret hours in return for the sacrifice of ten albino virgin pygmy hippos.

The leopard is a cruel lover. His tenderness breaks the gazelle's heart.

There's no glory in this whole shit. No war is ever glorious. Heroes are usually dead. Besides, they rarely turn into heroes because they are super-humans, but because of circumstances.
Heroes rarely think. Heroes just act. So, all this is, is a stage for glory, small, personal and up to each one of us.

You ... ." just you, always you. My russian Cu**, my enemy, my comrade, my prisoner, my gaoler and my life. Words unthinking. "Love ... ... you.

Dan. His. Partner. Comrade. Lover. His again.

It was easier being strong when another man was strong enough to be weak.

Right there with yours.

Unplayed sound is like unspoken words.

Following orders is right. Giving orders for the wrong reasons isn't.

Pretty is different,' he murmured. 'Pretty has no scars. You are ... ' jaw muscles tensed again. 'Like the morning sky in Afghanistan. Not 'pretty'. Word's 'breathtaking'.

One touch from you ... ," water coated his lips, gathered in thick drops on his dark lashes, "makes me feel more than a whole goddamned orgy.

Me, i'm going to write ass-kicking trans* characters. I think I might end up writing not a single thing that is "pure" by some people's standards. Just because, and because I can.

"There is only one thing I want to be part of. You."

The motherfucker really finds a way to say something very simple in a very complicated way," murmured Jean near Dan's ear. "How many words does it take him to say 'I love you'?"
"None." Dan murmured, smiling. "We're long beyond that.

I love you, don't you fucking see that?"
Dan was desperate, grabbing hold of the second wrist, shaking Vadim. "But how can I do that if you can't love me? If you need me instead of love me? If you fall in love with someone else, while expecting me to keep you together? How the fuck is that going to work? It fucking hurts, you understand? And I don't know what the fuck to do about it, because I can't just switch off and stop loving you. It doesn't work like that. It'll never happen, you get me? I tried that shit, several times already, but there's no fucking way I'll ever not love you and that fucking hurts like fucking shit when you're someone I don't recognise anymore!

I'm not ruling a man by where he places his head at night. The power of the pillow is no power at all."

(Amrash)

Nobody else exists to me when he lands. Everything stops existing when he takes off, as if he takes it all with him when he goes up there, to places I'll never see again. That vast open non-place of emptiness that only becomes significant when his comrades are there, too, and of course the enemy fighters guarding the bombers bound for Berlin.

I'll be in position. Vadim left the building, struggling with the emotion, fuck, Dan kissing him like that hat shaken him, deeply. He'd needed that touch, that oath, that everything, but coudln't have responded any other way. Not in Russian, not in English. Couldn't have just held on to him for a moment longer. He wanted to hold him, fuck him, be fucked, he wanted to rest at Dan's shoulder after sex and think nothing but that they were both alive. Fuck the war, fuck the past, fuck the money.

He broke me and since then, I just couldn't get rid of him. Not that I wanted to, but..." Vadim shook his head, chewed on his lip. "Ah, fuck."
"That's not love." The words came out of Hooch, without thinking. The truth did not meet the expectation, not after what he'd witnessed.
Vadim shook his head. "It wasn't. Of course not. How could it have been?

It's hard to know a truth when you've never encountered one.

The shade melted away as the sun climbed into its zenith. All colors were now covered in stone dust. The only vigorous activity came from the bushes, where cicada songs pulsed like alien hearts.

If you lie with scorpions, you'd better have a taste for poison."
(Kendras)

And all I know is that I can't lose you. I need you. You keep me together. You keep me going."
"That's a big fucking lot of responsibility, istn't it?" Dan's dark eyes were vulnarable, "you need me, or you love me. Wich one is it? And is there room for understanding me as well?"
"It's both, Dan. Not either or".

Spencer: "Based on the number of drinks?"
Nick: "Based on the number of licks.

His hand drifted up Jared's spine and into his hair. For a moment, he just stroked Jared's scalp, the movements slow, almost tender.
"Always hot watching a man get fucked." And then he grabbed Jared's hair and jerked his head back. "But even hotter watching him beg for it, isn't it?

You made me human. I stand by that. You made me into somebody I would have wanted to become, if I'd ever thought about what I wanted to be that wasn't about a record or power or a rank or some ... delusion I was chasing. If all that was gone and stripped away, the man I am, I am because of what you did, what you made me feel all those years.

Let me live. Keep me alive. Both sentences so close in English, but very different meaning.

You'd be the first enemy that ever got shaved by Spetsnaz, and not in the way we mean 'shaving'." As in, cut throat.
"Hoo-fucking-ray.

Tell me why I shouldn't shoot you," Stefano murmured. Low, intimate, just between them.
"Fun ... would be over too fast?

Your father's impressive.'He's a scary motherfucker, but we get along well.

He cried, you understand? Damned Mad Dog cried. Drunk, for what? For you. For fucking you! "

"He cried? We all do. Enough vodka, and we cry.

Falling in love with you isn't easy. Most people waver between loving you and killing you, and you're usually lucky they come out at the loving you side.

In the end, this armor is my skin. If it is damaged, I am damaged.

As long as you're not in love with the man, then why feel guilty because you're having fun? Besides, I've been thinking...
if you did fall in love with someone else there would be pretty little I could do." He suddenly chuckled, "except for ripping your guts out, cutting your balls off and stuffing them down your throat, of course."
(Dan)

Vadim felt Dan's breath against his chest, shifted his legs to allow him to lie close, and pushed a fold of the blanket back to make sure Dan was fully covered. Dan. Always him. Always, and again and again.

Vadim moved to touch his lips to Dan's, tilting his head with his hand, urging him to open up and pressed in harder, needed that feeling now, that want and need. The fact there was the desire that had been the basis of everything, much before any feelings or thoughts had become important, complicating it all.

„What would you struggle for? What's worth fighting for?"
"Life, the next breath, the next beat of one's heart. What else is there worth fighting for?

Vadim swallowed, felt his throat too tight to move, then, still staring at the bottle, smelling the desert and Dan, and himself, his hand reached to his side, opened the holster of the pistol. Took out the mag, took the bullet from the chamber, clicked the mag in place again, rolled the bullet between his fingers.
He looked at Dan, sideways, saw the man stare at him, all eyes, dark eyes, and the way the pale desert moon made his face a place of shadows.
He reached for Dan's hand, opened the fingers and placed the bullet into the palm.
"This is the bullet you'll use to kill me if I walk away again." Because if I walk away again, I'll be in so much pain I'm better off dead anyway.

Arousal is a fairly complex thing. Many people masturabate when they're bored, not because they're aroused. (Dima)

If the world ends tomorrow, how will I go? Without ever having risked anything, or having done the one thing I can't stop thinking about?

I'm not the casual sex type."
"Yeah, I gathered that. Why? Bored?"
"I wish." Josh gave a short laugh and shook his head. "No, sex with me is complicated.

I don't want to talk." Dan's neck muscles tensed resisting Vadim's hand.
He didn't know the words and he didn't want to search for them. "I just want to feel." But no, that wasn't it. "I want to feel human.