" The next day, she flew back to Moscow. If anyone loved long-distance flights, it was Nora. She loved it when you found yourself nowhere at all—in a sort of abstract space and an indeterminate, vacillating time, when, all of a sudden, all obligations, all promises cease. Everything is put on hold—telephone calls, the mail, requests, offers, complaints—they all stop short, and you hover, you fly, you soar between heaven and earth, between earth and the moon, between the earth and the sun. You fall out of your ordinary system of coordinates. You fly … as Tengiz, my soulmate, had; the only one I knew who had burst through all the boundaries of this world alive, and had learned to inhabit another world—the world of shadows … Tengiz … Love beyond touch, love outside of time. "

― Lyudmila Ulitskaya , Лестница Якова