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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.

-Vladimir Nabokov

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I Am Thinking Of

Vladimir Nabokov

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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.

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We All Have Such Fateful Objects -- It May Be A Recurrent Landscape In One Case, A Number In Another -- Carefully Chosen By The Gods To Attract Events Of Specific Significance For Us: Here Shall John Always Stumble; There Shall Jane's Heart Always Break.

Let All Of Life Be An Unfettered Howl.

I Confess, I Do Not Believe In Time.

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

The Contemplation Of Beauty, Whether It Be A Uniquely Tinted Sunset, A Radiant Face, Or A Work Of Art, Makes Us Glance Back Unwittingly At Our Personal Past And Juxtapose Ourselves And Our Inner Being With The Utterly Unattainable Beauty Revealed To Us.

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

It Was An Interesting Thing To Do. Why Did I Write Any Of My Books, After All? For The Sake Of The Pleasure, For The Sake Of The Difficulty. I Have No Social Purpose, No Moral Message; I've No General Ideas To Exploit, I Just Like Composing Riddles With Elegant Solutions.

My Answer To Your Question'does The Writer Have A Social Responsibility?' Is No.you Owe Me Ten Cents, Sir.

My Lolita Remarked: "you Know, What's So Dreadful About Dying Is That You Are Completely On Your Own"; And It Struck Me, As My Automaton Knees Went Up And Down, That I Simply Did Not Know A Thing About My Darling's Mind And That Quite Possibly, Behind The Awful Juvenile Cliches, There Was In Her A Garden And A Twilight, And A Palace Gate - Dim And Adorable Regions Which Happened To Be Lucidly And Absolutely Forbidden To Me, In My Polluted Rags And Miserable Convulsions.

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.

Why Should I Tolerate A Perfect Stranger At The Bedside Of My Mind?

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).

...in My Dreams The World Would Come Alive, Becoming So Captivatingly Majestic, Free And Ethereal, That Afterwards It Would Be Oppressive To Breathe The Dust Of This Painted Life.

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

Curiosity Is Insubordination In Its Purest Form.

Insubordination

Solitude Was Corrupting Me.

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. . .

The Days Of My Youth, As I Look Back On Them, Seem To Fly Away From Me In A Flurry Of Pale Repetitive Scraps Like Those Morning Snow Storms Of Used Tissue Paper That A Train Passenger Sees Whirling In The Wake Of The Observation Car.

Whatever His Secret Was, I Have Learnt One Secret Too, And Namely: That The Soul Is But A Manner Of Being - Not A Constant State - That Any Soul May Be Yours, If You Find And Follow Its Undulations. The Hereafter May Be The Full Ability Of Consciously Living In Any Chosen Soul, In Any Number Of Souls, All Of Them Unconscious Of Their Interchangeable Burden.

When I Receive A New Novel From A Hopeful Publisher - "hoping That I Like The Book As Much As He Does" - I Check First Of All How Much Dialog There Is, And If It Looks Too Abundant Or Too Sustained, I Shut The Book With A Bang.

He Was Powerless Because He Had No Precise Desire, And This Tortured Him Because He Was Vainly Seeking Something To Desire. He Could Not Even Make Himself Stretch Out His Hand To Switch On The Light. The Simple Transition From Intention To Action Seemed An Unimaginable Miracle.

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.

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.

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

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.

Although I Do Not Care For The Slogan "art For Art's Sake", There Can Be No Question That What Makes A Work Of Fiction Safe From Larvae And Rust Is Not Its Social Importance But Its Art, Only Its Art.

If A Violin String Could Ache, I Would Be That String.

Sleep Is The Most Moronic Fraternity In The World, With The Heaviest Dues And The Crudest Rituals. It Is A Mental Torture I Find Debasing... I Simply Cannot Get Used To The Nightly Betrayal Of Reason, Humanity, Genius.

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

While A Few Pertinent Points Have To Be Marked, The General Impression I Desire To Convey Is Of A Side Door Crashing Open In Life's Full Flight, And A Rush Of Roaring Black Time Drowning With Its Whipping Wind The Cry Of Lone Disaster.

She Was Lo, Plain Lo, In The Morning, Standing Four Feet Ten In One Sock. She Was Lola In Slacks. She Was Dolly At School. She Was Dolores On The Dotted Line. But In My Arms She Was Always Lolita.

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.

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

I Think My Favorite Fact About Myself Is That I Have Never Been Dismayed By A Critic's Bilge Or Bile, And Have Never Once In My Life Asked Or Thanked A Reviewer For A Review.

I Talk In A Daze, I Walk In A Maze I Cannot Get Out, Said The Starling

A Certain Man Once Lost A Diamond Cuff-link In The Wide Blue Sea, And Twenty Years Later, On The Exact Day, A Friday Apparently, He Was Eating A Large Fish - But There Was No Diamond Inside. That’s What I Like About Coincidence.

Even While Writing His Book, He Had Become Painfully Aware How Little He Knew His Own Planet While Attempting To Piece Together Another One From Jagged Bits Filched From Deranged Brains.

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

But That Mimosa Grove - The Haze Of Stars, The Tingle, The Flame, The Honey-dew, And The Ache Remained With Me, And That Little Girl With Her Seaside Limbs And Ardent Tongue Haunted Me Ever Since." "this Then Is My Story. I Have Reread It. It Has Bits Of Marrow Sticking To It, And Blood, And Beautiful Bright-green Flies. At This Or That Twist Of It I Feel My Slippery Self Eluding Me, Gliding Into Deeper And Darker Waters Than I Care To Probe.

I Think It Is All A Matter Of Love.

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.

Between The Wolf In The Tall Grass And The Wolf In The Tall Story There Is A Shimmering Go-between. That Go-between, That Prism, Is The Art Of Literature.

It Is Strange That The Tactile Sense, Which Is So Infinitely Less Precious To Men Than Sight, Becomes At Critical Moments Our Main, If Not Only, Handle To Reality.

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

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.

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

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

Oh, Let Me Be Mawkish For The Nonce! I Am So Tired Of Being Cynical.

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.

And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust.

All Great Novels Are Great Fairy Tales.

All At Once We Were Madly, Clumsily, Shamelessly, Agonizingly In Love With Each Other; Hopelessly, I Should Add, Because That Frenzy Of Mutual Possession Might Have Been Assuaged Only By Our Actually Imbibing And Assimilating Every Particle Of Each Other's Soul And Flesh; But There We Were, Unable Even To Mate As Slum Children Would Have So Easily Found An Opportunity To Do So.

No Difference Exists Between American And European Manners. A Proletarian From Chicago Can Be Just As Philistine As An English Duke.

Here Lies The Sense Of Literary Creation To Portray Ordinary Objects As They Will Be Reflected In Kindly Mirrors Of Future Times. . . . To Find In Objects Around Us The Fragrant Tenderness That Only Posterity Will Discern . . .

The Breaking Of A Wave Cannot Explain The Whole Sea.

Breaking Promises

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 Sometimes Used To Ask Myself, What On Earth Did I Love Her For? Maybe Fore The Warm Hazel Iris Of Her Fluffy Eyes, Or For The Natural Side-wave Of Her Brown Hair, Done Anyhow, Or Again For That Movement Of Her Plump Shoulders. But, Probably The Truth Was That I Loved Her Because She Loved Me. To Her I Was The Ideal Man: Brains, Pluck. And There Was None Dressed Better. I Remember Once, When I First Put On That New Dinner Jacket, With The Vast Trousers, She Clapsed Her Hands, Sank Down On A Chair And Murmured: 'oh, Hermann...." It Was Ravishment Bordering Upon Something Like Heavenly Woe.

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

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

Satire Is A Lesson, Parody Is A Game.

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

An Active And Creative Reader Is A Re-reader.

I Would Like To Spare The Time And Effort Of Hack Reviewers And, Generally, Persons Who Move Their Lips When Reading.

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.

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.

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.

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

And Presently I Was Driving Through The Drizzle Of The Dying Day, With The Windshield Wipers In Full Action But Unable To Cope With My Tears.

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.

My Own Ultraviolet Darling. " Lolita

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

Chess Problems Demand From The Composer The Same Virtues That Characterize All Worthwhile Art: Originality, Invention, Conciseness, Harmony, Complexity, And Splendid Insincerity

His Wings Were Failing, But He Refused To Fall Without A Struggle.

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.

I Have Rewritten — Often Several Times — Every Word I Have Ever Published. My Pencils Outlast Their Erasers.

Occasionally, In The Middle Of A Conversation Her Name Would Be Mentioned, And She Would Run Down The Steps Of A Chance Sentence, Without Turning Her Head.

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

My Mind Speaks English, My Heart Speaks Russian, And My Ear Prefers French.

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

No Writer In A Free Country Should Be Expected To Bother About The Exact Demarcation Between The Sensuous And The Sensual; This Is Preposterous; I Can Only Admire But Cannot Emulate The Accuracy Of Judgment Of Those Who Pose The Fair Young Mammals Photographed In Magazines Where The General Neckline Is Just Low Enough To Provoke A Past Master's Chuckle And Just High Enough Not To Make A Postmaster Frown.

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

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

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

The Pages Are Still Blank, But There Is A Miraculous Feeling Of The Words Being There, Written In Invisible Ink And Clamoring To Become Visible.

Down You Go, But All The While You Feel Suspended And Buoyed As You Somersault In Slow Motion Like A Somnolent Tumbler Pigeon, And Sprawl Supine On The Eiderdown Of The Air, Or Lazily Turn To Embrace Your Pillow, Enjoying Every Last Instant Of Soft, Deep, Death-padded Life, With The Earth's Green See-saw Now Above, Now Below, And The Voluptuous Crucifixion, As You Stretch Yourself In The Growing Rush, In The Nearing Swish, And Then Your Loved Body's Obliteration In The Lap Of The Lord.

Because You Took Advantage Of My Disadvantage.

Imagination, The Supreme Delight Of The Immortal And The Immature, Should Be Limited. In Order To Enjoy Life, We Should Not Enjoy It Too Much.

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.

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

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!

Poor Knight! He Really Had Two Periods, The Firsta Dull Man Writing Broken English, The Seconda Broken Man Writing Dull English.

You Have To Be An Artist And A Madman, A Creature Of Infinite Melancholy, With A Bubble Of Hot Poison In Your Loins And A Super-voluptuous Flame Permanently Aglow In Your Subtle Spine (oh, How You Have To Cringe And Hide!), In Order To Discern At Once, By Ineffable Signs―the Slightly Feline Outline Of A Cheekbone, The Slenderness Of A Downy Limbs, And Other Indices Which Despair And Shame And Tears Of Tenderness Forbid Me To Tabulate―the Little Deadly Demon Among The Wholesome Children; She Stands Unrecognized By Them And Unconscious Herself Of Her Fantastic Power.

Suddenly For No Earthly Reason I Felt Immensely Sorry For Him And Longed To Say Something Real, Something With Wings And A Heart, But The Birds I Wanted Settled On My Shoulders And Head Only Later When I Was Alone And Not In Need Of Words.

A Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

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

There Is The First Satisfaction Of Arranging It On A Bit Of Paper; After Many, Many False Tries, False Moves, Finally You Have The Sentence You Recognize As The One You Are Looking For.

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

Coordinating There Events And Objects With Remote Events And Vanished Objects. Making Ornaments Of Accidents And Possibilities.

My Little Cup Brims With Tiddles.

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

The Tiny Madman In His Padded Cell.

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

Genius Is Finding The Invisible Link Between Things.

If Possible, Be Russian. And Live In Another Country. Play Chess. Be An Active Trader Between Languages. Carry Precious Metals From One To The Other. Remind Us Of Stravinsky. Know The Names Of Plants And Flying Creatures. Hunt Gauzy Wings With Snares Of Gauze. Make Science Pay Tribute. Have A Butterfly Known By Your Name.

Caress The Detail, The Divine Detail.

Pnin Slowly Walked Under Solemn Pines. The Sky Was Dying. He Did Not Believe In An Autocratic God. He Did Believe, Dimly, In A Democracy Of Ghosts. The Souls Of The Dead, Perhaps, Formed Committees, And These, In Continuous Session, Attended The Destinies Of The Quick.

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

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

I Cannot Conceive How Anybody In His Right Mind Should Go To A Psychoanalyst.

Dostoevky's Lack Of Taste, His Monotonous Dealings With Persons Suffering With Pre-freudian Complexes, The Way He Has Of Wallowing In The Tragic Misadventures Of Human Dignity - All This Is Difficult To Admire.

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

We Think Not In Words But In Shadows Of Words.

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

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.

My Very Photogenic Mother Died In A Freak Accident (picnic, Lightning) When I Was Three, And, Save For A Pocket Of Warmth In The Darkest Past, Nothing Of Her Subsists Within The Hollows And Dells Of Memory, Over Which, If You Can Still Stand My Style (i Am Writing Under Observation), The Sun Of My Infancy Had Set: Surely, You All Know Those Redolent Remnants Of Day Suspended, With The Midges, About Some Hedge In Bloom Or Suddenly Entered And Traversed By The Rambler, At The Bottom Of A Hill, In The Summer Dusk; A Furry Warmth, Golden Midges.

The Future Is But The Obsolete In Reverse.

The Road Now Stretched Across Open Country, And It Occured To Me - Not By Way Of Protest, Not As A Symbol, Or Anything Like That, But Merely As A Novel Experience - That Since I Had Disregarded All Laws Of Humanity, I Might As Well Disregard The Rules Of Traffic. So I Crossed To The Left Side Of The Highway And Checked The Feeling, And The Feeling Was Good. It Was A Pleasant Diaphragmal Melting, With Elements Of Diffused Tactility, All This Enhanced By The Thought That Nothing Could Be Nearer To The Elimination Of Basic Physical Laws Than Deliberately Driving On The Wrong Site Of The Road.

I Knew I Had Fallen In Love With Lolita Forever; But I Also Knew She Would Not Be Forever Lolita.

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

Which Arrow Flies For Ever? The Arrow That Has Hit Its Mark.

The Pleasures Of Writing Correspond Exactly To The Pleasures Of Reading

I Do Not Begin My Novel At The Beginning, I Do Not Reach Chapter Three Before I Reach Chapter Four, I Do Not Go Dutifully From One Page To The Next, In Consecutive Order; No, I Pick Out A Bit Here And A Bit There, Till I Have Filled All The Gaps On Paper. This Is Why I Like Writing My Stories And Novels On Index Cards, Numbering Them Later When The Whole Set Is Complete. Every Card Is Rewritten Many Times.

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.

Nymphets Do Not Occur In Polar Regions.

Once Upon A Time There Lived In Berlin, Germany, A Man Called Albinus. He Was Rich, Respectable, Happy; One Day He Abandoned His Wife For The Sake Of A Youthful Mistress; He Loved; Was Not Loved; And His Life Ended In Disaster. This Is The Whole Of The Story And We Might Have Left It At That Had There Not Been Profit And Pleasure In The Telling; And Although There Is Plenty Of Space On A Gravestone To Contain, Bound In Moss, The Abridged Version Of A Man's Life, Detail Is Always Welcome.

I Grew, A Happy, Healthy Child In A Bright World Of Illustrated Books, Clean Sand, Orange Trees, Friendly Dogs, Sea Vistas And Smiling Faces.

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

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.

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

Life Is Short. From Here To That Old Car You Know So Well There Is A Stretch Of Twenty, Twenty-five Paces. It Is A Very Short Walk. Make Those Twenty-five Steps. Now. Right Now. Come Just As You Are. And We Shall Live Happily Ever After.

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.

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.

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

She Would Try To Relieve The Pain Of Love By First Roughly Rubbing Her Dry Lips Against Mine; Then My Darling Would Draw Away With A Nervous Toss Of Her Hair, And Then Again Come Darkly Near And Let Me Feed On Her Open Mouth, While With A Generosity That Was Ready To Offer Her Everything, My Heart, My Throat, My Entrails, I Gave Her To Hold In Her Awkward First The Scepter Of My Passion.

Words Without Experience Are Meaningless.

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.

Do Not Be Awed By Giant Predecessors. Be Ill-tempered With Their Renown. Point Out Flaws. Frighten Interviewers From Time. Appear In Playboy. Sell To The Movies.

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!

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

If I Correctly Understand The Sense Of This Succinct Observation, Our Poet Suggests Here That Human Life Is But A Series Of Footnotes To A Vast Obscure Unfinished Masterpiece.

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

Only One Letter Divides The Comic From The Cosmic.

Art At Its Greatest Is Fantastically Deceitful And Complex.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I See Again My Schoolroom In Vyra, The Blue Roses Of The Wallpaper, The Open Window.… Everything Is As It Should Be, Nothing Will Ever Change, Nobody Will Ever Die.

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.

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

I Have The European Urge To Use My Feet When A Drive Can Be Dispensed With.

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.

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.

And He Absolutely Had To Find Her At Once To Tell Her That He Adored Her, But The Large Audience Before Him Separated Him From The Door, And The Notes Reaching Him Through A Succession Of Hands Said That She Was Not Available; That She Was Inaugurating A Fire; That She Had Married An American Businessman; That She Had Become A Character In A Novel; That She Was Dead.

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

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

Could Have Been

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.

Readers Are Not Sheep, And Not Every Pen Tempts Them.

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.

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.

I Am Sufficiently Proud Of My Knowing Something To Be Modest About My Not Knowing All.

You Lose Your Immortality When You Lose Your Memory.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

A Wise Reader Reads The Book Of Genius Not With His Heart, Not So Much With His Brain, But With His Spine. It Is There That Occurs The Telltale Tingle.

There Are Some Varieties Of Fiction That I Never Touch - Mystery Stories, For Instance, Which I Abhor, And Historical Novels. I Also Detest The So-called "powerful" Novel - Full Of Commonplace Obscenities And Torrents Of Dialog.

Historical Novels

The General Impression Is That Fifteen Year-old Dolly Remains Morbidly Uninterested In Sexual Matters, Or To Be Exact, Represses Her Curiosity In Order To Save Her Ignorance And Self-dignity.

There Is An Old American Saying 'he Who Lives In A Glass House Should Not Try To Kill Two Birds With One Stone.

Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

Life Is A Message Scribbled In The Dark.

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

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

And What Is Death, If Not A Face At Peace - Its Artistic Perfection.

And Yet I Am Happy. Yes, Happy. I Swear. I Swear That I Am Happy...what Does It Matter That I Am A Bit Cheap, A Bit Foul, And That No One Appreciates All The Remarkable Things About Me-my Fantasy, My Erudition, My Literary Gift...i Am Happy That I Can Gaze At Myself, For Any Man Is Absorbing-yes, Really Absorbing! ... I Am Happy-yes, Happy!

Don't Cry, I'm Sorry To Have Deceived You So Much, But That's How Life Is.

Nothing Revives The Past So Completely As A Smell That Was Once Associated With It.

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.

Do Those Clowns Really Believe What They Teach?

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

I Always Call Him Lewis Carroll Carroll, Because He Was The First Humbert Humbert.

All Religions Are Based On Obsolete Terminology.

There Was No Lo To Behold.

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

Solitude Is The Playfield Of Satan.

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.

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

The Lost Glove Is Happy.

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.

I Could Also Distinguish The Glint Of A Special Puddle (the One Krug Had Somehow Perceived Through The Layer Of His Own Life), An Oblong Puddle Invariably Acquiring The Same Form After Every Shower Because Of The Constant Spatulate Shape Of A Depression In The Ground. Possibly Something Of The Kind May Be Said To Occur In Regard To The Imprint We Leave In The Intimate Texture Of Space. Twang. A Good Night For Nothing.

...for The Human Brain Can Become The Best Torture House Of All Those It Has Invented, Established And Used In A Millions Of Years, In Millions Of Lands, On Millions Of Howling Creatures.

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 .

Knowing You Have Something Good To Read Before Bed Is Among The Most Pleasurable Of Sensations.

Some People—and I Am One Of Them—hate Happy Ends. We Feel Cheated. Harm Is The Norm. Doom Should Not Jam. The Avalanche Stopping In Its Tracks A Few Feet Above The Cowering Village Behaves Not Only Unnaturally But Unethically.

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.

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