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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.

-Vladimir Nabokov

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The Social Or Economic

Vladimir Nabokov

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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.

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Freedom Of Speech

More From Vladimir Nabokov

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.

Our Best Yesterdays Are Now Foul Piles Of Crumpled Names.

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

He Broke My Heart. You Merely Broke My Life.

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

All Great Novels Are Great Fairy Tales.

There Is Nothing More Atrociously Cruel Than An Adored Child.

While The Scientist Sees Everything That Happens In One Point Of Space, The Poet Feels Everything That Happens In One Point Of Time.

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

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 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.

Words Without Experience Are Meaningless.

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.

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.

Let All Of Life Be An Unfettered Howl.

Who Can Say What Heartbreaks Are Caused In A Dog By Our Discontinuing A Romp?

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.

We Are Most Artistically Caged.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

In And Out Of My Heart Flowed My Rainbow Blood.

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.

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

My Loathings Are Simple. Stupidity, Oppression, Crime, Cruelty, Soft Music. My Pleasures Are The Most Intense Known To Man: Writing And Butterfly Hunting.

Dear Jesus, Do Something.

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

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).

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Curiosity Is Insubordination In Its Purest Form.

Insubordination

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.

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.

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.

Nymphets Do Not Occur In Polar Regions.

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 .

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

There Was No Lo To Behold.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

- 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Caress The Detail, The Divine Detail.

Life Is A Message Scribbled In The Dark.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. . .

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Was Weeping Again, Drunk On The Impossible Past.

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?

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

The Lost Glove Is Happy.

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

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.

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.

The Future Is But The Obsolete In Reverse.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

A Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

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

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.

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

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

I Don't Think In Any Language. I Think In Images.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

My Own Ultraviolet Darling. " Lolita

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

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.

Nothing Is More Exhilarating Than Philistine Vulgarity.

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

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

I Think She Always Nursed A Small Mad Hope.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A 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.

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.

Revelation Can Be More Perilous Than Revolution.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Confess, I Do Not Believe In Time.

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.

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.

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

Play! Invent The World! Invent Reality!

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

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

The Square Root Of I Is I.

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

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!

Humbert Was Perfectly Capable Of Intercourse With Eve, But It Was Lilith He Longed For.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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Thomas B. Macaulay

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