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My Private Tragedy, Which Cannot, And Indeed Should Not, Be Anybody's Concern, Is That I Had To Abandon My Natural Idiom, My Untrammeled, Rich, And Infinitely Docile Russian Tongue For A Second-rate Brand Of English, Devoid Of Any Of Those Apparatuses–the Baffling Mirror, The Black Velvet Backdrop, The Implied Associations And Traditions–which The Native Illusionist, Frac-tails Flying, Can Magically Use To Transcend The Heritage In His Own Way.

-Vladimir Nabokov

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My Private Tragedy, Which

Vladimir Nabokov

...

My Private Tragedy, Which Cannot, And Indeed Should Not, Be Anybody's Concern, Is That I Had To Abandon My Natural Idiom, My Untrammeled, Rich, And Infinitely Docile Russian Tongue For A Second-rate Brand Of English, Devoid Of Any Of Those Apparatuses–the Baffling Mirror, The Black Velvet Backdrop, The Implied Associations And Traditions–which The Native Illusionist, Frac-tails Flying, Can Magically Use To Transcend The Heritage In His Own Way.

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Nymphets Do Not Occur In Polar Regions.

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.

I Think It Is All A Matter Of Love.

You Lose Your Immortality When You Lose Your Memory.

Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

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.

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.

A Creative Writer Must Study Carefully The Works Of His Rivals, Including The Almighty. He Must Possess The Inborn Capacity Not Only Of Recombining But Of Re-creating The Given World. In Order To Do This Adequately, Avoiding Duplication Of Labor, The Artist Should Know The Given World.

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.

He Broke My Heart. You Merely Broke My Life.

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!

My Heart Was A Hysterical Unreliable Organ.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust.

You Can Always Count On A Murderer For A Fancy Prose Style.

…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.

A Cluster Of Stars Palely Glowed Above Us, Between The Silhouettes Of Long Thin Leaves; That Vibrant Sky Seemed As Naked As She Was Under Her Light Frock. I Saw Her Face In The Sky, Strangely Distinct, As If It Emitted A Faint Radiance Of Its Own.

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

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

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!

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.

Our Best Yesterdays Are Now Foul Piles Of Crumpled Names.

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.

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.

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

Let All Of Life Be An Unfettered Howl. Like The Crowd Greeting The Gladiator. Don't Stop To Think, Don't Interrupt The Scream, Exhale, Release Life's Rapture.

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.

My Own Ultraviolet Darling. " Lolita

Human Thought, Flying On The Trapezes Of The Star-filled Universe, With Mathematics Stretched Beneath, Was Like An Acrobat Working With A Net But Suddenly Noticing That In Reality There Is No Net.

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.

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

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

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. . .

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Future Is But The Obsolete In Reverse.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Lolita, Light Of My Life, Fire Of My Loins. My Sin, My Soul.

Between The Age Limits Of Nine And Fourteen There Occur Maidens Who, To Certain Bewitched Travelers, Twice Or Many Times Older Than They, Reveal Their True Nature Which Is Not Human, But Nymphic (that Is, Demoniac); And These Chosen Creatures I Propose To Designate As Nymphets.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 .

Nothing Is More Exhilarating Than Philistine Vulgarity.

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

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

Could Have Been

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.

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.

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.

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

My Carmen," I Said (i Used To Call Her That Sometimes) "we Shall Leave This Raw Sore Town As Soon As You Get Out Of Bed." "... Because, Really," I Continued, "there Is No Point In Staying Here." "there Is No Point In Staying Anywhere," Said Lolita.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Little Cup Brims With Tiddles.

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

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

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

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

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

Solitude Is The Playfield Of Satan.

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

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

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.

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.

I Don't Read Reviews About Myself With Any Special Eagerness Or Attention Unless They Are Masterpieces Of Wit And Acumen, And I Never Reread Them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Shall Continue To Exist. I May Assume Other Disguises, Other Forms, But I Shall Try To Exist.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Art At Its Greatest Is Fantastically Deceitful And Complex.

We Are Most Artistically Caged.

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

...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.

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 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.

Existence Is A Series Of Footnotes To A Vast, Obscure, Unfinished Masterpiece.

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

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.

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.

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

Her Lips Were Like Large Crimson Polyps.

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

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

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

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

My Private Tragedy, Which Cannot, And Indeed Should Not, Be Anybody's Concern, Is That I Had To Abandon My Natural Idiom, My Untrammeled, Rich, And Infinitely Docile Russian Tongue For A Second-rate Brand Of English, Devoid Of Any Of Those Apparatuses–the Baffling Mirror, The Black Velvet Backdrop, The Implied Associations And Traditions–which The Native Illusionist, Frac-tails Flying, Can Magically Use To Transcend The Heritage In His Own Way.

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.

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

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.

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

The Breaking Of A Wave Cannot Explain The Whole Sea.

Breaking Promises

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

The Tiny Madman In His Padded Cell.

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

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

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 Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

There Was No Lo To Behold.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

One Is Always At Home In One's Past.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Beauty Plus Pity-that Is The Closest We Can Get To A Definition Of Art. Where There Is Beauty There Is Pity For The Simple Reason That Beauty Must Die: Beauty Always Dies, The Manner Dies With The Matter, The World Dies With The Individual.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Burn Pedants In Pale Fire. Accept No Fashions. Be Your Own Fashion. Do Not Rely On Earlier Triumphs. Be New At Each Appearance.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Let All Of Life Be An Unfettered Howl.

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.

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.

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.

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

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

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.

Solitude Was Corrupting Me.

A Novelist Is, Like All Mortals, More Fully At Home On The Surface Of The Present Than In The Ooze Of The Past.

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

The Lost Glove Is Happy.

Dear Jesus, Do Something.

I Think She Always Nursed A Small Mad Hope.

He Was Afraid Of Touching His Own Wrist. He Never Attempted To Sleep On His Left Side, Even In Those Dismal Hours Of The Night When The Insomniac Longs For A Third Side After Trying The Two He Has.

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.

I Have Often Noticed That After I Had Bestowed On The Characters Of My Novels Some Treasured Item Of My Past, It Would Pine Away In The Artificial World Where I Had So Abruptly Placed It.

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

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.

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.

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Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

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