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Of All My Russian Books, The Defense Contains And Diffuses The Greatest 'warmth' Which May Seem Odd Seeing How Supremely Abstract Chess Is Supposed To Be

-Vladimir Nabokov

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Of All My Russian

Vladimir Nabokov

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Of All My Russian Books, The Defense Contains And Diffuses The Greatest 'warmth' Which May Seem Odd Seeing How Supremely Abstract Chess Is Supposed To Be

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Let All Of Life Be An Unfettered Howl.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

- 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.

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 Was The Shadow Of The Waxwing Slain By The False Azure In The Windowpane; I Was The Smudge Of Ashen Fluff -and I Lived On, Flew On, In The Reflected Sky. And From The Inside, Too, I'd Duplicate Myself, My Lamp, An Apple On A Plate: Uncurtaining The Night, I'd Let Dark Glass Hang All The Furniture Above The Grass, And How Delightful When A Fall Of Snow Covered My Glimpse Of Lawn And Reached Up So As To Make Chair And Bed Exactly Stand Upon That Snow, Out In That Crystal Land!

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

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 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.

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

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.

And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

In Reading, One Should Notice And Fondle Details.

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

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.

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.

Satire Is A Lesson, Parody Is A Game.

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 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 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.

Usually I Read Several Books At A Time - Old Books, New Books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Verse, Anything - And When The Bedside Heap Of A Dozen Volumes Or So Has Dwindled To Two Or Three, Which Generally Happens By The End Of One Week, I Accumulate Another Pile.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

...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.

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

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

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

The Pleasures Of Writing Correspond Exactly To The Pleasures Of Reading

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.

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.

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

There 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.

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.

My Heart Was A Hysterical Unreliable Organ.

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.

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

I Was Weeping Again, Drunk On The Impossible Past.

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

Her Lips Were Like Large Crimson Polyps.

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

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

A Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

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.

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.

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

Solitude Is The Playfield Of Satan.

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

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

I 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.

Do Those Clowns Really Believe What They Teach?

We Think Not In Words But In Shadows Of Words.

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 More Atrociously Cruel Than An Adored Child.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

The Tiny Madman In His Padded Cell.

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

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

There Is No Science Without Fancy And No Art Without Fact.

Nothing Is More Exhilarating Than Philistine Vulgarity.

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. . .

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Above All, Beware Of Platitudes, I.e., Word Combinations That Have Already Appeared A Thousand Times.... As A General Rule, Try To Find New Combinations Of Words (not For The Sake Of Their Novelty, But Because Every Person Sees Things In An Individual Way And Must Find His Own Words For Them).

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

The Lost Glove Is Happy.

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.

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

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

Imagine Me; I Shall Not Exist If You Do Not Imagine Me; Try To Discern The Doe In Me, Trembling In The Forest Of My Own Iniquity; Let's Even Smile A Little. After All, There Is No Harm In Smiling.

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

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.

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

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

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.

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

…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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Only One Letter Divides The Comic From The Cosmic.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A 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.

All Religions Are Based On Obsolete Terminology.

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

Just Like A Man Grieving Because He Has Recently Lost In His Dreams Some Thing That He Had Never Had In Reality, Or Hoping That Tomorrow He Would Dream That He Found It Again. That Is How Mathematics Is Created; It Has Its Fatal Flaw.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Words Without Experience Are Meaningless.

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

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.

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.

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

We Are Most Artistically Caged.

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.

One Is Always At Home In One's Past.

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

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

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.

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.

Genius Is Finding The Invisible Link Between Things.

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

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.

Curiosity Is Insubordination In Its Purest Form.

Insubordination

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Most Of The Dandelions Had Changed From Suns To Moons.

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

My Little Cup Brims With Tiddles.

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.

Caress The Detail, The Divine Detail.

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.

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

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.

Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

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