Background Image

...

But As Van Casually Directed The Searchlight Of Backthought Into That Maze Of The Past Where The Mirror-lined Narrow Paths Not Only Took Different Turns, But Used Different Levels (as A Mule-drawn Cart Passes Under The Arch Of A Viaduct Along Which A Motor Skims By), He Found Himself Tackling, In Still Vague And Idle Fashion, The Science That Was To Obsess His Mature Years - Problems Of Space And Time, Space Versus Time, Time-twisted Space, Space As Time, Time As Space - And Space Breaking Away From Time, In The Final Tragic Triumph Of Human Cogitation: I Am Because I Die.

-Vladimir Nabokov

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

But As Van Casually

Vladimir Nabokov

...

But As Van Casually Directed The Searchlight Of Backthought Into That Maze Of The Past Where The Mirror-lined Narrow Paths Not Only Took Different Turns, But Used Different Levels (as A Mule-drawn Cart Passes Under The Arch Of A Viaduct Along Which A Motor Skims By), He Found Himself Tackling, In Still Vague And Idle Fashion, The Science That Was To Obsess His Mature Years - Problems Of Space And Time, Space Versus Time, Time-twisted Space, Space As Time, Time As Space - And Space Breaking Away From Time, In The Final Tragic Triumph Of Human Cogitation: I Am Because I Die.

Views: 35326

Topic

More From Vladimir Nabokov

I Need You, The Reader, To Imagine Us, For We Don't Really Exist If You Don't.

Although We Read With Our Minds, The Seat Of Artistic Delight Is Between The Shoulder Blades. That Little Shiver Behind Is Quite Certainly The Highest Form Of Emotion That Humanity Has Attained When Evolving Pure Art And Pure Science. Let Us Worship The Spine And Its Tingle.

All The Seven Deadly Sins Are Peccadilloes But Without Three Of Them, Pride, Lust, And Sloth, Poetry Might Never Have Been Born.

Nostalgia In Reverse, The Longing For Yet Another Strange Land, Grew Especially Strong In Spring.

My Only Grudge Against Nature Was That I Could Not Turn My Lolita Inside Out And Apply Voracious Lips To Her Young Matrix, Her Unknown Heart, Her Nacreous Liver, The Sea-grapes Of Her Lungs, Her Comely Twin Kidneys.

Age Indomitably, In The European Manner. Do Not Finish Your Labours Young. Be A Planet, Not A Meteor. Honor The Working Day. Sit At Your Desk.

Her Lips Were Like Large Crimson Polyps.

Ideas In Modern Russia Are Machine-cut Blocks Coming In Solid Colors; The Nuance Is Outlawed, The Interval Walled Up, The Curve Grossly Stepped.

She Had Spent All Her Life In Feeling Miserable; This Misery Was Her Native Element; Its Fluctuations, Its Varying Depths, Alone Save Her The Impression Of Moving And Living. What Bothers Me Is That A Sense Of Misery, And Nothing Else, Is Not Enough To Make A Permanent Soul. My Enormous And Morose Mademoiselle Is All Right On Earth But Impossible In Eternity.

Life Is A Message Scribbled In The Dark.

Oh, My Lolita, I Have Only Words To Play With!

My Principal Failing As A Writer Is The Lack Of Spontaneity; The Nuisance Of Parallel Thoughts, Second Thoughts, Third Thoughts; Inability To Express Myself Properly In Any Language Unless I Compose Every Damned Sentence In My Bath, In My Mind, At My Desk.

Direct Interference In A Person's Life Does Not Enter Our Scope Of Activity, Nor, On The Other, Tralatitiously Speaking, Hand, Is His Destiny A Chain Of Predeterminate Links: Some 'future' Events May Be Linked To Others, O.k., But All Are Chimeric, And Every Cause-and-effect Sequence Is Always A Hit-and-miss Affair, Even If The Lunette Has Actually Closed Around Your Neck, And The Cretinous Crowd Holds Its Breath.

My Little Cup Brims With Tiddles.

Do What Only A True Artist Can Do ... Pounce Upon The Forgotten Butterfly Of Revelation

And She Was Mine, She Was Mine, The Key Was In My Fist, My Fist Was In My Pocket, She Was Mine.

I Could Isolate, Consciously, Little. Everything Seemed Blurred, Yellow-clouded, Yielding Nothing Tangible. Her Inept Acrostics, Maudlin Evasions, Theopathies - Every Recollection Formed Ripples Of Mysterious Meaning. Everything Seemed Yellowly Blurred, Illusive, Lost.

Only Talent Interests Me In Paintings And Books. Not General Ideas, But The Individual Contribution.

Another Tormentor Inquired If It Was True That I Had Installed Two Ping-pong Tables In My Basement. I Asked, Was It A Crime? No, He Said, But Why Two? Is That A Crime? I Countered, And They All Laughed.

One Is Always At Home In One's Past.

All Great Novels Are Great Fairy Tales.

In And Out Of My Heart Flowed My Rainbow Blood.

Stirless, I Stand At The Window, And In The Black Bowl Of The Sky Glows Like A Golden Drop Of Honey The Mellow Moon

Do Those Clowns Really Believe What They Teach?

Imagination Without Knowledge Leads No Farther Than The Back Yard Of Primitive Art, The Child's Scrawl On The Fence, And The Crank's Message In The Market Place. Art Is Never Simple.

I Have No Desires, Save The Desire To Express Myself In Defiance Of All The World’s Muteness.

Life Is Just One Small Piece Of Light Between Two Eternal Darknesses.

We Loved Each Other With A Premature Love, Marked By A Fierceness That So Often Destroys Adult Lives.

I Think She Always Nursed A Small Mad Hope.

There Are Teachers And Students With Square Minds Who Are By Nature Meant To Undergo The Fascination Of Catagories. For Them, 'schools' And 'movements' Are Everything; By Painting A Group Symbol On The Brow Of Mediocrity, They Condone Their Own Incomprehension Of True Genius.

As To The Rest, I Am No More Guilty Of Imitating 'real Life' Than'real Life' Is Responsible For Plagiarizing Me.

Neither In Environment Nor In Heredity Can I Find The Exact Instrument That Fashioned Me, The A.non.y.muse Roller That Passed Upon My Life A Certain Intricate Watermark Whose Unique Design Becomes Visible When The Lamp Of Art Is Made To Shine Through Life's Foolscap.

A Masterpiece Of Fiction Is An Original World And As Such Is Not Likely To Fit The World Of The Reader.

It Is Nothing But A Kind Of A Microcosmos Of Communism - All That Psychiatry', Rumbled Pnin ... 'why Not Leave Their Private Sorrow To People? Is Sorrow Not, One Asks, The Only Thing In The World People Really Possess?

The Nostalgia I Have Been Cherishing All These Years Is A Hypertrophied Sense Of Lost Childhood, Not Sorrow For Lost Banknotes.

Literature Was Not Born The Day When A Boy Crying "wolf, Wolf" Came Running Out Of The Neanderthal Valley With A Big Gray Wolf At His Heels; Literature Was Born On The Day When A Boy Came Crying "wolf, Wolf" And There Was No Wolf Behind Him.

Caress The Detail, The Divine Detail.

...and The Red Sun Of Desire And Decision (the Two Things That Create A Live World) Rose Higher And Higher, While Upon A Succession Of Balconies A Succession Of Libertines, Sparkling Glass In Hand, Toasted The Bliss Of Past And Future Nights.

I Cannot Help Feeling There Is Something Essentially Wrong About Love. Friends May Quarrel Or Drift Apart, Close Relations Too, But There Is Not This Pang, This Pathos, This Fatality Which Clings To Love. Friendship Never Has That Doomed Look. Why, What Is The Matter? I Have Not Stopped Loving You, But Because I Cannot Go On Kissing Your Dim Dear Face, We Must Part, We Must Part.

Have You Ever Happened, Reader, To Feel That Subtle Sorrow Of Parting With An Unloved Abode? The Heart Does Not Break, As It Does In Parting With Dear Objects. The Humid Gaze Does Not Wander Around Holding Back A Tear, As If It Wished To Carry Away In It A Trembling Reflection Of The Abandoned Spot; But In The Best Corner Of Our Hearts We Feel Pity For The Things Which We Did Not Bring To Life With Our Breath, Which We Hardly Noticed And Are Now Leaving Forever. This Already Dead Iventory Will Not Be Resurrected In One's Memory.

Nothing Is More Exhilarating Than Philistine Vulgarity.

If He Was Silent I Could Be Silent Too. Indeed, I Could Very Well Do With A Little Rest In This Subdued, Frightened-to-death Rocking Chair, Before I Drove To Wherever The Beast's Lair Was - And Then Pulled The Pistol's Foreskin Back, And Then Enjoyed The Orgasm Of The Crushed Trigger.

A Writer Should Have The Precision Of A Poet And The Imagination Of A Scientist.

Curiosity Is Insubordination In Its Purest Form.

Insubordination

Complacency Is A State Of Mind That Exists Only In Retrospective: It Has To Be Shattered Before Being Ascertained.

But As Van Casually Directed The Searchlight Of Backthought Into That Maze Of The Past Where The Mirror-lined Narrow Paths Not Only Took Different Turns, But Used Different Levels (as A Mule-drawn Cart Passes Under The Arch Of A Viaduct Along Which A Motor Skims By), He Found Himself Tackling, In Still Vague And Idle Fashion, The Science That Was To Obsess His Mature Years - Problems Of Space And Time, Space Versus Time, Time-twisted Space, Space As Time, Time As Space - And Space Breaking Away From Time, In The Final Tragic Triumph Of Human Cogitation: I Am Because I Die.

The Thought, When Written Down, Becomes Less Oppressive, But Some Thoughts Are Like A Cancerous Tumor: You Express Is, You Excise It, And It Grows Back Worse Than Before.

Discussion In Class, Which Means Letting Twenty Young Blockheads And Two Cocky Neurotics Discuss Something That Neither Their Teacher Nor They Know.

By God, I Could Make Myself Bring Her That Economically Halved Grapefruit, That Sugarless Breakfast.

Let The Credulous And The Vulgar Continue To Believe That All Mental Woes Can Be Cured By A Daily Application Of Old Greek Myths To Their Private Parts.

Whenever I Start Thinking Of My Love For A Person, I Am In The Habit Of Immediately Drawing Radii From My Love - From My Heart, From The Tender Nucleus Of A Personal Matter- To Monstrously Remote Points Of The Universe. Something Impels Me To Measure The Consciousness Of My Love Against Such Unimaginable And Incalculable Things As The Behaviour Of Nebulae (whose Very Remoteness Seems A Form Of Insanity), The Dreadful Pitfalls Of Eternity, The Unknowledgeable Beyond The Unknown, The Helplessness, The Cold, The Sickening Involutions And Interpenetrations Of Space And Time.

There Is Nothing Dictators Hate So Much As That Unassailable, Eternally Elusive, Eternally Provoking Gleam. One Of The Main Reasons Why The Very Gallant Russian Poet Gumilev Was Put To Death By Lenin's Ruffians Thirty Odd Years Ago Was That During The Whole Ordeal, In The Prosecutor's Dim Office, In The Torture House, In The Winding Corridors That Led To The Truck, In The Truck That Took Him To The Place Of Execution, And At That Place Itself, Full Of The Shuffling Feet Of The Clumsy And Gloomy Shooting Squad, The Poet Kept Smiling.

A Sense Of Security, Of Well-being, Of Summer Warmth Pervades My Memory. That Robust Reality Makes A Ghost Of The Present. The Mirror Brims With Brightness; A Bumblebee Has Entered The Room And Bumps Against The Ceiling. Everything Is As It Should Be, Nothing Will Ever Change, Nobody Will Ever Die.

Perhaps, Somewhere, Some Day, At A Less Miserable Time, We May See Each Other Again.

I Hope You Will Love Your Baby. I Hope It Will Be A Boy. That Husband Of Yours, I Hope, Will Always Treat You Well, Because Otherwise My Specter Shall Come Out Of Him, Like Black Smoke, Like A Demented Giant, And Pull Him Apart Nerve By Nerve. ... I Am Thinking Of Aurochs And Angels, The Secret Of Durable Pigments, Prophetic Sonnets, The Refuge Of Art. And This Is The Only Immortality You And I May Share, My Lolita.

Beauty Plus Pity -- That Is The Closest We Can Get To A Definition Of Art.

A Person Hoping To Become A Poet Must Have The Capacity Of Thinking Of Several Things At A Time.

We Are Most Artistically Caged.

I Am Not, And Never Was, And Never Could Have Been, A Brutal Scoundrel.

Could Have Been

The Future Is But The Obsolete In Reverse.

And This Is The Only Immortality You And I May Share, My Lolita.

Remembrance, Like Rembrandt, Is Dark But Festive. Remembered Ones Dress Up For The Occasion And Sit Still. Memory Is A Photo-studio De Luxe On An Infinite Fifth Power Avenue.

The Social Or Economic Structure Of The Ideal State Is Of Little Concern To Me. My Desires Are Modest. Portraits Of The Head Of The Government Should Not Exceed A Postage Stamp In Size. No Torture And No Executions. No Music, Except Coming Through Earphones, Or Played In Theaters. Freedom Of Speech, Freedom Of Thought, Freedom Of Art.

Freedom Of Speech

A Major Writer Combines These Three - Storyteller, Teacher, Enchanter - But It Is The Enchanter In Him That Predominates And Makes Him A Major Writer.

At Eight, He Had Once Told His Mother That He Wanted To Paint Air.

No Author Has Created With Less Emphasis Such Pathetic Characters As Chekhov Has.

There Is Only One Real Number: One. And Love, Apparently, Is The Best Exponent Of This Singularity.

And Yet I Adore Him. I Think He's Quite Crazy, And With No Place Or Occupation In Life, And Far From Happy, And Philosophically Irresponsible – And There Is Absolutely Nobody Like Him.

He Broke My Heart. You Merely Broke My Life.

I Don't Belong To Any Club Or Group. I Don't Fish, Cook, Dance, Endorse Books, Sign Books, Co-sign Declarations, Eat Oysters, Get Drunk, Go To Church, Go To Analysts, Or Take Part In Demonstrations.

A Work Of Art Has No Importance Whatever To Society. It Is Only Important To The Individual.

If He Failed The First Time He Took His Driver's Licence Test, It Was Mainly Because He Started An Argument With The Examiner In An Ill-timed Effort To Prove That Nothing Could Be More Humiliating To A Rational Creature Than Being Required To Encourage The Development Of A Base Conditional Reflex By Stopping At A Red Light When There Was Not An Earthly Soul Around, Heeled Or Wheeled. He Was More Circumspect The Next Time, And Passed.

Only One Letter Divides The Comic From The Cosmic.

I Was The Shadow Of The Waxwing Slain/by The False Azure In The Windowpane.

All My Stories Are Webs Of Style And None Seems At First Blush To Contain Much Kinetic Matter.

After The First Shock Of Recognition - A Sudden Sense Of "this Is What I'm Going To Write" - The Novel Starts To Breed By Itself; The Process Goes On Solely In The Mind, Not On Paper. I Feel A Kind Of Gentle Development, An Uncurling Inside, And I Know That The Details Are There Already, That In Fact I Would See Them Plainly If I Looked Closer, But I Prefer To Wait Until What Is Loosely Called Inspiration Has Completed The Task For Me.

I Adore You, Mon Petit, And Would Never Allow Him To Hurt You, No Matter How Gently Or Madly.

There He Stood, In The Camouflage Of Sun And Shade, Disfigured By Them And Masked By His Own Nakedness.

Adultery Is A Most Conventional Way To Rise Above The Conventional.

It Was Love At First Sight, At Last Sight, At Ever And Ever Sight.

A Change Of Environment Is The Traditional Fallacy Upon Which Doomed Loves, And Lungs, Rely.

Old Birds Like Orlovius Are Wonderfully Easy To Lead By The Beak, Because A Combination Of Decency And Sentimentality Is Exactly Equal To Being A Fool.

There Was A Time In My Demented Youth When Somehow I Suspected That The Truth About Survival After Death Was Known To Every Human Being: I Alone Knew Nothing, And A Great Conspiracy Of Books And People Hid The Truth From Me.

My Loathings Are Simple: Stupidity, Oppression, Crime, Cruelty, Soft Music.

Everything In The World Is Beautiful, But Man Only Recognizes Beauty If He Sees It Either Seldom Or From Afar. Listen, Today We Are Gods! Our Blue Shadows Are Enormous! We Move In A Gigantic, Joyful World!

In This Crazy Mirror Of Terror And Art A Pseudo-quotation Made Up Of Obscure Shakespeareanisms (chapter Three) Somehow Produces, Despite Its Lack Of Literal Meaning, The Blurred Diminutive Image Of The Acrobatic Performance That So Gloriously Supplies The Bravura Ending For The Next Chapter.

... My Mind Lay Limp In An Empty World.

Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury, Exhibit Number One Is What The Seraphs, The Misinformed, Simple, Noble-winged Seraphs, Envied. Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

Don't Touch Me; I'll Die If You Touch Me.

Literature And Butterflies Are The Two Sweetest Passions Known To Man.

And I Want To Rise Up, Throw My Arms Open For A Vast Embrace, Address An Ample, Luminous Discourse To The Invisible Crowds. I Would Start Like This: "o Rainbow-colored Gods. . .

…she Was, Obviously, One Of Those Women Whose Polished Words May Reflect A Book Club Or Bridge Club, Or Any Other Deadly Conventionality, But Never Her Soul.

In Reading, One Should Notice And Fondle Details.

The Evolution Of Sense Is, In A Sense, The Evolution Of Nonsense.

It Is Hard, I Submit, To Loathe Bloodshed, Including War, More Than I Do, But It Is Still Harder To Exceed My Loathing Of The Very Nature Of Totalitarian States In Which Massacre Is Only An Administrative Detail.

The Good, The Admirable Reader Identifies Himself Not With The Boy Or The Girl In The Book, But With The Mind That Conceived And Composed That Book.

To Play Safe, I Prefer To Accept Only One Type Of Power: The Power Of Art Over Trash, The Triumph Of Magic Over The Brute.

Thus, In Pornographic Novels, Action Has To Be Limited To The Copulation Of Clichés.

Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

All Religions Are Based On Obsolete Terminology.

As Far As I Can Recall, The Initial Shiver Of Inspiration [for Lolita] Was Somehow Prompted By A Newspaper Story About An Ape In The Jardin Des Plantes, Who, After Months Of Coaxing By A Scientist, Produced The First Drawing Ever Charcoaled By An Animal: This Sketch Showed The Bars Of The Poor Creature's Cage.

Long After Her Death I Felt Her Thoughts Floating Through Mine. Long Before We Met We Had Had The Same Dreams. We Compared Notes. We Found Strange Affinities. The Same June Of The Same Year (1919) A Stray Canary Had Fluttered Into Her House And Mine, In Two Widely Separated Countries. Oh, Lolita, Had You Love Me Thus!

I Have No Ear For Music. When I Attend A Concert, I Endeavor Gamely To Follow The Sequence And Relationship Of Sounds But Cannot Keep It Up For More Than A Few Minutes. Visual Impressions, Reflections Of Hands In Lacquered Wood, A Diligent Bald Spot Over A Fiddle, Take Over, And Soon I Am Bored Beyond Measure By The Motions Of The Musicians.

I Loved You. I Was A Pentapod Monster, But I Loved You. I Was Despicable And Brutal, And Turpid, And Everything, Mais Je T’aimais, Je T’aimais!

Only Ambitious Nonentities And Hearty Mediocrities Exhibit Their Rough Drafts. It's Like Passing Around Samples Of Sputum.

In A Sense, All Poetry Is Positional: To Try To Express One's Position In Regard To The Universe Embraced By Consciousness, Is An Immemorial Urge. The Arms Of Consciousness Reach Out And Grope, And The Longer They Are The Better. Tentacles, Not Wings, Are Apollo's Natural Members.

We Hasten To Alienate The Very Fates We Intended To Woo.

There Is Nothing In The World That I Loathe More Than Group Activity, That Communal Bath Where The Hairy And Slippery Mix In A Multiplication Of Mediocrity.

The Day, Like The Previous Days, Dragged Sluggishly By In A Kind Of Insipid Idleness, Devoid Even Of That Dreamy Expectancy Which Can Make Idleness So Enchanting.

I Looked And Looked At Her, And I Knew, As Clearly As I Know That I Will Die, That I Loved Her More Than Anything I Had Ever Seen Or Imagined On Earth. She Was Only The Dead-leaf Echo Of The Nymphet From Long Ago - But I Loved Her, This Lolita, Pale And Polluted And Big With Another Man's Child. She Could Fade And Wither - I Didn't Care. I Would Still Go Mad With Tenderness At The Mere Sight Of Her Face.

Use Unlikely Materials. Who Would Choose Pnin As Hero, But How Did We Live Before Pnin?

A Thousand Years Ago Five Minutes Were Equal To Forty Ounces Of Fine Sand. Outstare The Stars. Infinite Foretime And Infinite Aftertime: Above Your Head They Close Like Giant Wings, And You Are Dead.

It's A Pity One Can't Imagine What One Can't Compare To Anything. Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

I Have Never Seen A More Lucid, More Lonely, Better Balanced Mad Mind Than Mine.

The Sun Is A Thief: She Lures The Sea And Robs It. The Moon Is A Thief: He Steals His Silvery Light From The Sun. The Sea Is A Thief: It Dissolves The Moon.

The Breaking Of A Wave Cannot Explain The Whole Sea.

Breaking Promises

Time Is Rhythm: The Insect Rhythm Of A Warm Humid Night, Brain Ripple, Breathing, The Drum In My Temple—these Are Our Faithful Timekeepers; And Reason Corrects The Feverish Beat.

To A Greater Or Lesser Extent There Goes On In Every Person A Struggle Between Two Forces: The Longing For Privacy And The Urge To Go Places: The Introversion, Interest Directed Within Oneself Toward One's Own Inner Life Of Vigorous Thought And Fancy; And Extroversion, Interest Directed Outward, Toward The External World Of People And Tangible Values.

Solitude Was Corrupting Me.

Some People, And I Am One Of Them, Hate Happy Ends. We Feel Cheated. Harm Is The Norm.

Mind You, Sometimes The Angels Smoke, Hiding It With Their Sleeves, And When The Archangel Comes, They Throw The Cigarettes Away: That’s When You Get Shooting Stars.

Theoretically There Is No Absolute Proof That One's Awakening In The Morning (the Finding Oneself Again In The Saddle Of One's Personality) Is Not Really A Quite Unprecedented Event, A Perfectly Original Birth.

A Philistine Is A Full-grown Person Whose Interests Are Of A Material And Commonplace Nature, And Whose Mentality Is Formed Of The Stock Ideas And Conventional Ideals Of His Or Her Group And Time.

Treading The Soil Of The Moon, Palpating Its Pebbles, Tasting The Panic And Splendor Of The Event, Feeling In The Pit Of One's Stomach The Separation From Terra-these Form The Most Romantic Sensation An Explorer Has Ever Known . . . This Is The Only Thing I Can Say About The Matter. The Utilitarian Results Do Not Interest Me.

All My Life I Have Been A Poor Go-to-sleeper. No Matter How Great My Weariness, The Wrench Of Parting With Consciousness Is Unspeakably Repulsive To Me.

There Are Two Kinds Of Visual Memory: One When You Skillfully Recreate An Image In The Laboratory Of Your Mind, With Your Eyes Open (and Then I See Annabel In Such General Terms As: "honey-colored Skin," "thin Arms," "brown Bobbed Hair," "long Lashes," "big Bright Mouth"); And The Other When You Instantly Evoke, With Shut Eyes, On The Dark Innerside Of Your Eyelids, The Objective, Absolutely Optical Replica Of A Beloved Face, A Little Ghost In Natural Colors (and This Is How I See Lolita).

For I Do Not Exist: There Exist But The Thousands Of Mirrors That Reflect Me. With Every Acquaintance I Make, The Population Of Phantoms Resembling Me Increases. Somewhere They Live, Somewhere They Multiply. I Alone Do Not Exist.

The Fire You Rubbed Left Its Brand On The Most Vulnerable, Most Vicious And Tender Point Of My Body. Now I Have To Pay For Your Rasping The Red Rash Too Strongly, Too Soon, As Charred Wood Has To Pay For Burning. When I Remain Without Your Caresses, I Lose All Control Of My Nerves, Nothing Exists Any More Than The Ecstasy Of Friction, The Abiding Effect Of Your Sting, Of Your Delicious Poison.

For I Do Not Exist: There Exist But The Thousands Of Mirrors That Reflect Me.

I Think It Is All A Matter Of Love.

I Witness With Pleasure The Supreme Achievement Of Memory, Which Is The Masterly Use It Makes Of Innate Harmonies When Gathering To Its Fold The Suspended And Wandering Tonalities Of The Past.

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

There Was No Lo To Behold.

For Better Or Worse, It Is The Commentator Who Has The Last Word.

It Is A Short Walk From The Hallelujah To The Hoot.

I Do Not See Any Essential Difference Between Abstract And Primitive Art. Both Are Simple And Sincere. Naturally, We Should Not Generalize In These Matters: It Is The Individual Artist That Counts.

My God Died Young. Theolatry I Found Degrading, And Its Premises, Unsound. No Free Man Needs God; But Was I Free?

I Shall Be Dumped Where The Weed Decays, And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust

But In My Arms She Was Always Lolita.

A Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

Some Might Think That The Creativity, Imagination, And Flights Of Fancy That Give My Life Meaning Are Insanity.

The Cradle Rocks Above An Abyss, And Common Sense Tells Us That Our Existence Is But A Brief Crack Of Light Between Two Eternities Of Darkness.

The Only Real Number Is One, The Rest Are Mere Repetition

The Writer's Job Is To Get The Main Character Up A Tree, And Then Once They Are Up There, Throw Rocks At Them.

Do Not Be Angry With The Rain; It Simply Does Not Know How To Fall Upwards.

What Surprises You In Life? The Marvel Of Consciousness -- That Sudden Window Swinging Open On A Sunlit Landscape Amidts The Night Of Non-being.

The Compensation For A Death Sentence Is The Knowledge Of The Exact Hour When One Is To Die. A Great Luxury, But One That Is Well Earned.

Dark Pictures, Thrones, The Stones That Pilgrims Kiss Poems That Take A Thousand Years To Die But Ape The Immortality Of This Red Label On A Little Butterfly .

Literature, Real Literature, Must Not Be Gulped Down Like Some Potion Which May Be Good For The Heart Or Good For The Brain—the Brain, That Stomach Of The Soul. Literature Must Be Taken And Broken To Bits, Pulled Apart, Squashed—then Its Lovely Reek Will Be Smelt In The Hollow Of The Palm, It Will Be Munched And Rolled Upon The Tongue With Relish; Then, And Only Then, Its Rare Flavor Will Be Appreciated At Its True Worth And The Broken And Crushed Parts Will Again Come Together In Your Mind And Disclose The Beauty Of A Unity To Which You Have Contributed Something Of Your Own Blood.

I Cannot Disobey Something Which I Do Not Know And The Reality Of Which I Have The Right To Deny.

Was She Really Beautiful? Was She At Least What They Call Attractive? She Was Exasperation, She Was Torture.

Ada Girl, Adored Girl, [...] I'm A Radiant Void. I'm Convalescing After A Long And Dreadful Illness. You Cried Over My Unseemly Scar, But Now Life Is Going To Be Nothing But Love And Laughter, And Corn In Cans. I Cannot Brood Over Broken Hearts, Mine Is Too Recently Mended.

I Was Weeping Again, Drunk On The Impossible Past.

Derivative Writers Seem Versatile Because They Imitate Many Others, Past And Present. Artistic Originality Has Only Itself To Copy.

A Man Who Has Decided Upon Self-destruction Is Far Removed From Mundane Affairs, And To Sit Down And Write His Will Would Be, At That Moment, An Act Just As Absurd As Winding Up One’s Watch, Since Together With The Man, The Whole World Is Destroyed; The Last Letter Is Instantly Reduced To Dust And, With It, All The Postmen; And Like Smoke, Vanishes The Estate Bequeathed To A Nonexistent Progeny.

There Are Gentle Souls Who Would Pronounce Lolita Meaningless Because It Does Not Teach Them Anything. I Am Neither A Reader Nor A Writer Of Didactic Fiction...for Me A Work Of Fiction Exists Only Insofar As It Affords Me What I Shall Bluntly Call Aesthetic Bliss, That Is A Sense Of Being Somehow, Somewhere, Connected With Other States Of Being Where Art (curiosity, Tenderness, Kindness, Ecstasy) Is The Norm.

Maybe The Only Thing That Hints At A Sense Of Time Is Rhythm; Not The Recurrent Beats Of The Rhythm But The Gap Between Two Such Beats, The Gray Gap Between Black Beats: The Tender Interval.

In Answer To The Question: What Scenes One Would Like To Have Filmed Shakespeare In The Part Of The King's Ghost. The Beheading Of Louis The Sixteenth, The Drums Drowning His Speech On The Scaffold. Herman Melville At Breakfast, Feeling A Sardine To His Cat. Poe's Wedding. Lewis Carroll's Picnics. The Russians Leaving Alaska, Delighted With The Deal. Shot Of A Seal Applauding.

I Am Surrounded By Some Sort Of Wretched Specters, Not By People. They Torment Me As Can Torment Only Senseless Visions, Bad Dreams, Dregs Of Delirium, The Drivel Of Nightmares And Everything That Passes Down Here For Real Life.

Our Best Yesterdays Are Now Foul Piles Of Crumpled Names.

I See Nothing For The Treatment Of My Misery But The Melancholy And Very Local Palliative Of Articulate Art.

I Am Probably Responsible For The Odd Fact That People Don't Seem To Name Their Daughters Lolita Any More. I Have Heard Of Young Female Poodles Being Given That Name Since 1956, But Of No Human Beings.

All The Information I Have About Myself Is From Forged Documents.

We Had Been Everywhere. We Had Really Seen Nothing. And I Catch Myself Thinking Today That Our Long Journey Had Only Defiled With A Sinuous Trail Of Slime The Lovely, Trustful, Dreamy, Enormous Country That By Then, In Retrospect, Was No More To Us Than A Collection Of Dog-eared Maps, Ruined Tour Books, Old Tires, And Her Sobs In The Night — Every Night, Every Night — The Moment I Feigned Sleep.

I Think It Is All A Matter Of Love: The More You Love A Memory, The Stronger And Stranger It Is.

Most Of The Dandelions Had Changed From Suns To Moons.

The Spiral Is A Spiritualized Circle. In The Spiral Form, The Circle, Uncoiled, Has Ceased To Be Vicious; It Has Been Set Free.

We Live Not Only In A World Of Thoughts, But Also In A World Of Things. Words Without Experience Are Meaningless.

Mnemosyne, One Must Admit, Has Shown Herself To Be A Very Careless Girl.

I Should Allow Only My Heart To Have Imagination; And For The Rest Rely On Memory, That Long Drawn Sunset Of One's Personal Truth.

Life With You Was Lovely—and When I Say Lovely, I Mean Doves And Lilies, And Velvet, And That Soft Pink ‘v’ In The Middle And The Way Your Tongue Curved Up To The Long, Lingering ‘l.’ Our Life Together Was Alliterative, And When I Think Of All The Little Things Which Will Die, Now That We Cannot Share Them, I Feel As If We Were Dead Too.

The Square Root Of I Is I.

I Believe The Poor Fierce-eyed Child Had Figured Out That With A Mere Fifty Dollars In Her Purse She Might Somehow Reach Broadway Or Hollywood - Or The Foul Kitchen Of A Diner (help Wanted) In A Dismal Ex-prairie State, With The Wind Blowing, And The Stars Blinking, And The Cars, And The Bars, And The Barmen, And Everything Soiled, Torn, Dead.

Non-russian Readers Do Not Realize Two Things: That Not All Russians Love Dostoievsky As Much As Americans Do, And That Most Of Those Russians Who Do, Venerate Him As A Mystic And Not As An Artist.

I Mean, I Have The Feeling That Something In My Mind Is Poisoning Everything Else.

Although I Could Never Get Used To The Constant State Of Anxiety In Which The Guilty, The Great, And The Tenderhearted Live, I Felt I Was Doing My Best In The Way Of Mimicry.

And Really, The Reason We Think Of Death In Celestial Terms Is That The Visible Firmament, Especially At Night (above Our Blacked-out Paris With The Gaunt Arches Of Its Boulevard Exelmans And The Ceaseless Alpine Gurgle Of Desolate Latrines), Is The Most Adequate And Ever-present Symbol Of That Vast Silent Explosion.

I Am Sentimental,’ She Said. ‘i Could Dissect A Koala But Not Its Baby. I Like The Words Damozel, Eglantine, Elegant. I Love When You Kiss My Elongated White Hand.

The Rich Philistinism Emanating From Advertisements Is Due Not To Their Exaggerating (or Inventing) The Glory Of This Or That Serviceable Article But To Suggesting That The Acme Of Human Happiness Is Purchasable And That Its Purchase Somehow Ennobles The Purchaser.

...all My Best Words Are Deserters And Do Not Answer The Trumpet Call, And The Remainder Are Cripples.

Perhaps If The Future Existed, Concretely And Individually, As Something That Could Be Discerned By A Better Brain, The Past Would Not Be So Seductive: Its Demands Would Be Balanced By Those Of The Future.

The Clumsiest Literal Translation Is A Thousand Times More Useful Than The Prettiest Paraphrase.

At A Very Early Stage Of The Novel's Development I Get This Urge To Collect Bits Of Straw And Fluff, And To Eat Pebbles. Nobody Will Ever Discover How Clearly A Bird Visualizes, Or If It Visualizes At All, The Future Nest And The Eggs In It.

To Know That No One Before You Has Seen An Organ You Are Examining, To Trace Relationships That Have Occurred To No One Before, To Immerse Yourself In The Wondrous Crystalline World Of The Microscope, Where Silence Reigns, Circumscribed By Its Own Horizon, A Blindingly White Arena - All This Is So Enticing That I Cannot Describe It.

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

Poetry Involves The Mysteries Of The Irrational Perceived Through Rational Words.

Curiously Enough, One Cannot Read A Book; One Can Only Reread It. A Good Reader, A Major Reader, And Active And Creative Reader Is A Rereader.

Toska - Noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian Word Roughly Translated As Sadness, Melancholia, Lugubriousness. "no Single Word In English Renders All The Shades Of Toska. At Its Deepest And Most Painful, It Is A Sensation Of Great Spiritual Anguish, Often Without Any Specific Cause. At Less Morbid Levels It Is A Dull Ache Of The Soul, A Longing With Nothing To Long For, A Sick Pining, A Vague Restlessness, Mental Throes, Yearning. In Particular Cases It May Be The Desire For Somebody Of Something Specific, Nostalgia, Love-sickness. At The Lowest Level It Grades Into Ennui, Boredom.

It Is A Singular Reaction, This Sitting Still And Writing, Writing, Writing, Or Ruminating At Length, Which Is Much The Same, Really.

Happy Is The Novelist Who Manages To Preserve An Actual Love Letter That He Received When He Was Young Within A Work Of Fiction, Embedded In It Like A Clean Bullet In Flabby Flesh And Quite Secure There, Among Spurious Lives.

To Begin With, Let Us Take The Following Motto...literature Is Love. Now We Can Continue.

Play! Invent The World! Invent Reality!

The More Gifted And Talkative One's Characters Are, The Greater The Chances Of Their Resembling The Author In Tone Or Tint Of Mind.

I Think Like A Genius, I Write Like A Distinguished Author, And I Speak Like A Child.

Religion Has The Same Relation To Man's Heavenly Condition That Mathematics Has To His Earthly One: Both The One And The Other Are Merely The Rules Of The Game. Belief In God And Belief In Numbers: Local Truth And Truth Of Location.

There Is Only One School Of Literature - That Of Talent.

You Know, What's So Dreadful About Dying Is That You Are Completely On Your Own.

I Still Dwelled Deep In My Elected Paradise--a Paradise Whose Skies Were The Color Of Hell-flames--but Still A Paradise.

I Don't Want An Elderly Gentleman From Vienna With An Umbrella Inflicting His Dreams Upon Me.

It Is Strange How A Memory Will Grow Into A Wax Figure, How The Cherub Grows Suspiciously Prettier As Its Frame Darkens With Age-strange, Strange Are The Mishaps Of Memory.

Trending Author

Georgette Heyer

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Rebecca Ferguson

Category