Kate Quinn

e lingered inside our fragile bubble of happiness, the kind of happiness that sits on top of melancholy as easily as icing on a cake.

Soviet men have always talked a good game about women standing shoulder to shoulder with their men in every field society had to offer, but when it came to children being tended, dishes being scrubbed, or applause being given, I had always observed that it was still female hands doing most of the tending, scrubbing, and clapping.

a good marksman is still not a sniper.”

A sniper is a patient hunter—he takes a single shot, and if he misses, he may pay for it with his life.”

“No matter how hard the metal, it yields to human strength,”

A good shooter moves without haste, every movement as deliberate as a clock’s hour hand ticking over.

On twelve the clock strikes midnight and the finger squeezes the trigger.

All the quirks and talents, weaknesses and foibles that made up two unique human lives, extinguished in seconds by two bullets.

Battles seem to be living things, creatures that need to breathe as much as the soldiers who are fighting them.

What is it like, to be a sniper?—has no answer. Every day was different. If it was a day I lived, it was a good day.