How to extract matrix elements using index pairs?

Might be a really basic question: Suppose I have a matrix:

>> A = magic(3)

A =

     8     1     6
     3     5     7
     4     9     2

I want to extract the elements A(1,1) and A(2,2). Is there a command to call the elements all at once by specifying a list of index pairs? Something like:

A((1,1);(2,2))

so that the output would be

ans =

     8
     5

I tried

A([1;2],[1;2])
A([1 1; 2 2])

but they both returned a matrix instead of a vector.

Answer 1

[Birdman]

r=[1 2];
c=[1 2];
A(sub2ind(size(A),r,c))

[Wendy Song]

Awesome. Thanks!