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- Might It Console You To Know That I Expect Nothing But Torture From Her Return? That I Regard You As A Bird Of Paradise? She Shook Her Head. - That My Admiration For You Is Painfully Strong? - I Want Van – She Cried – And Not Intangible Admiration. - Intangible? You Goose. You My Gauge It, You May Brush It Once Very Lightly With The Knuckles Of You Gloved Hand. I Said Knuckles. I Said Once. That Will Do. I Can't Kiss You. Not Even Your Burning Face. Good-bye, Pet. Tell Edmond To Take A Nap After He Returns. I Shall Need Him At Two In The Morning.

-Vladimir Nabokov

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- Might It Console

Vladimir Nabokov

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- Might It Console You To Know That I Expect Nothing But Torture From Her Return? That I Regard You As A Bird Of Paradise? She Shook Her Head. - That My Admiration For You Is Painfully Strong? - I Want Van – She Cried – And Not Intangible Admiration. - Intangible? You Goose. You My Gauge It, You May Brush It Once Very Lightly With The Knuckles Of You Gloved Hand. I Said Knuckles. I Said Once. That Will Do. I Can't Kiss You. Not Even Your Burning Face. Good-bye, Pet. Tell Edmond To Take A Nap After He Returns. I Shall Need Him At Two In The Morning.

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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 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.

Dear Jesus, Do Something.

In Reading, One Should Notice And Fondle Details.

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. . .

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.

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

The Breaking Of A Wave Cannot Explain The Whole Sea.

Breaking Promises

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

I Think Like A Genius, I Write Like A Distinguished Author, And I Speak Like A Child.... My Hemmings And Hawings Over The Telephone Cause Long-distance Callers To Switch From Their Native English To Pathetic French. At Parties, If I Attempt To Entertain People With A Good Story, I Have To Go Back To Every Other Sentence For Oral Erasures And Inserts.... In These Circumstances Nobody Should Ask Me To Submit To An Interview If By "interview" A Chat Between Two Normal Human Beings Is Implied.

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.

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

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.

There Are Aphorisms That, Like Airplanes, Stay Up Only While They Are In Motion.

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.

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

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.

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.

In And Out Of My Heart Flowed My Rainbow Blood.

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

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

Resemblances Are The Shadows Of Differences. Different People See Different Similarities And Similar Differences.

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.

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

Nymphets Do Not Occur In Polar Regions.

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

Turning One's Novel Into A Movie Script Is Rather Like Making A Series Of Sketches For A Painting That Has Long Ago Been Finished And Framed.

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 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!

Perhaps If The Year Was 1447 Instead Of 1947 I Might Have Hoodwinked My Gentle Nature By Administering Her Some Classical Poison From A Hollow Agate, Some Tender Philter Of Death. But In Our Middle-class Nosy Era It Would Not Have Come Off The Way It Used To In The Brocaded Palaces Of The Past. Nowadays You Have To Be A Scientist If You Want To Be A Killer.

Her Lips Were Like Large Crimson Polyps.

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.

Memory Overshadows The Present And Dims The Future "into Something Thicker Than Its Usual Pea Soup."

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.

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.

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

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.

Art At Its Greatest Is Fantastically Deceitful And Complex.

Our Imagination Flies -- We Are Its Shadow On The Earth.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

That Swimming, Sloping, Elusive Something About The Dark-bluish Tint Of The Iris Which Seemed Still To Retain The Shadows It Had Absorbed Of Ancient, Fabulous Forests Where There Were More Birds Than Tigers And More Fruit Than Thorns, And Where, In Some Dappled Depth, Man's Mind Had Been Born.

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

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

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.

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

There Is Nothing More Atrociously Cruel Than An Adored Child.

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

I Think It Is All A Matter Of Love.

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.

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).

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

Alas! In Vain Historians Pry And Probe: The Same Wind Blows, And In The Same Live Robe Truth Bends Her Head To Fingers Curved Cupwise; And With A Woman's Smile And A Child's Care Examines Something She Is Holding There Concealed By Her Own Shoulder From Our Eyes.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The Square Root Of I Is I.

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

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

An Active And Creative Reader Is A Re-reader.

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

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

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.

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 . . .

I Think She Always Nursed A Small Mad Hope.

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

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.

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

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-until At Last, Twenty-four Years Later, I Broke Her Spell By Incarnating Her In Another.

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

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

Our Best Yesterdays Are Now Foul Piles Of Crumpled Names.

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

- Might It Console You To Know That I Expect Nothing But Torture From Her Return? That I Regard You As A Bird Of Paradise? She Shook Her Head. - That My Admiration For You Is Painfully Strong? - I Want Van – She Cried – And Not Intangible Admiration. - Intangible? You Goose. You My Gauge It, You May Brush It Once Very Lightly With The Knuckles Of You Gloved Hand. I Said Knuckles. I Said Once. That Will Do. I Can't Kiss You. Not Even Your Burning Face. Good-bye, Pet. Tell Edmond To Take A Nap After He Returns. I Shall Need Him At Two In The Morning.

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

All Colors Made Me Happy: Even Gray. My Eyes Were Such That Literally They Took Photographs.

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

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

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

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

Lolita, Light Of My Life, Fire Of My Loins. My Sin, My Soul. Lo-lee-ta: The Tip Of The Tongue Taking A Trip Of Three Steps Down The Palate To Tap, At Three, On The Teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

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

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.

But In My Arms She Was Always Lolita.

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.

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.

We Are Most Artistically Caged.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

Genius Still Means To Me, In My Russian Fastidiousness And Pride Of Phrase, A Unique Dazzling Gift. The Gift Of James Joyce, And Not The Talent Of Henry James.

A Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

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.

All Religions Are Based On Obsolete Terminology.

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

Could Have Been

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

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.

Caress The Detail, The Divine Detail.

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.

Revelation Can Be More Perilous Than Revolution.

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

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

Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A Realgood Head Is Not Oval But Round.

...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.

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.

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.

Style And Structure Are The Essence Of A Book; Great Ideas Are Hogwash.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Was Also Supposed To Quiz My Various Companions On A Number Of Important Matters Such As Nostalgia, Fear Of Unknown Animals, Food Fantasies, Nocturnal Emissions, Hobbies, Choice Of Radio Program, Changes In Out Look And So Forth.

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

Freudism And All It Has Tainted With Its Grotesque Implications And Methods, Appear To Me To Be One Of The Vilest Deceits Practiced By People On Themselves And On Others. I Reject It Utterly, Along With A Few Other Medieval Items Still Adored By The Ignorant, The Conventional, Or The Very Sick.

The Tiny Madman In His Padded Cell.

Measure Me While I Live - After It Will Be Too Late.

I Know More Than I Can Express In Words, And The Little I Can Express Would Not Have Been Expressed, Had I Not Known More.

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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

Solitude Was Corrupting Me.

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

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.

The Term "bend Sinister" Means A Heraldic Bar Or Band Drawn From The Left Side (and Popularly, But Incorrectly, Supposed To Denote Bastardy). This Choice Of Title Was An Attempt To Suggest An Outline Broken By Refraction, A Distortion In The Mirror Of Being, A Wrong Turn Taken By Life, A Sinistral And Sinister World. The Title's Drawback Is That A Solemn Reader Looking For "general Ideas" Or "human Interest" (which Is Much The Same Thing) In A Novel May Be Led To Look For Them In This One.

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.

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.

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.

Because You Took Advantage Of My Disadvantage.

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.

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.

I Was Weeping Again, Drunk On The Impossible Past.

A Toothache Will Cost A Battle, A Drizzle Cancel An Insurrection.

Play! Invent The World! Invent Reality!

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

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.

...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.

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.

Devices Which In Some Curious New Way Imitate Nature Are Attractive To Simple Minds.

How Small The Cosmos (a Kangaroo's Pouch Would Hold It), How Paltry And Puny In Comparison To Human Consciousness, To A Single Individual Recollection, And Its Expression In Words!

Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

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

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

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 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.

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

A Work Of Art Has No Importance Whatever To Society. It Is Only Important To The Individual, And Only The Individual Reader Is Important To Me. I Don't Give A Damn For The Group, The Community, The Masses, And So Forth.

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

It Is Certainly Not Then-not In Dreams- But When One Is Wide Awake, At Moments Of Robust Joy And Achievement, On The Highest Terrace Of Consciousness, That Mortality Has A Chance To Peer Beyond Its Own Limits, From The Mast, From The Past And Its Castle Tower. And Although Nothing Much Can Be Seen Through The Mist, There Is Somehow The Blissful Feeling That One Is Looking In The Right Direction.

I Do Not Know If It Has Ever Been Noted Before That One Of The Main Characteristics Of Life Is Discreteness. Unless A Film Of Flesh Envelopes Us, We Die. Man Exists Only Insofar As He Is Separated From His Surroundings. The Cranium Is A Space-traveler's Helmet. Stay Inside Or You Perish. Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion. It May Be Wonderful To Mix With The Landscape, But To Do So Is The End Of The Tender Ego.

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.

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

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.

Do Those Clowns Really Believe What They Teach?

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

The Summer Night Was Starless And Stirless, With Distant Spasms Of Silent Lightning.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Loneliness As A Situation Can Be Corrected, But As A State Of Mind It Is An Incurable Illness.

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

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

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

You Lose Your Immortality When You Lose Your Memory.

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.

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.

Literature Is Invention. Fiction Is Fiction. To Call A Story A True Story Is An Insult To Both Art And Truth.

I Confess, I Do Not Believe In Time.

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

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.

Life Is A Message Scribbled In The Dark.

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

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

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.

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Michael Badnarik

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