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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).

-Vladimir Nabokov

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There Are Two Kinds

Vladimir Nabokov

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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).

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Because You Took Advantage Of My Disadvantage.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Toska - Noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian Word Roughly Translated As Sadness, Melancholia, Lugubriousness. "no Single Word In English Renders All The Shades Of Toska. At Its Deepest And Most Painful, It Is A Sensation Of Great Spiritual Anguish, Often Without Any Specific Cause. At Less Morbid Levels It Is A Dull Ache Of The Soul, A Longing With Nothing To Long For, A Sick Pining, A Vague Restlessness, Mental Throes, Yearning. In Particular Cases It May Be The Desire For Somebody Of Something Specific, Nostalgia, Love-sickness. At The Lowest Level It Grades Into Ennui, Boredom.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

We Think Not In Words But In Shadows Of Words.

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

Play! Invent The World! Invent Reality!

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

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.

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

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.

I Should Allow Only My Heart To Have Imagination; And For The Rest Rely On Memory, That Long Drawn Sunset Of One's Personal Truth.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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

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

The Commentator May Be Excused For Repeating What He Has Stressed In His Own Books And Lectures, Namely That "offensive" Is Frequently But A Synonym For "unusual;" And A Great Work Of Art Is Of Course Always Original, And Thus By Its Very Nature Should Come More Or Less As A Shocking Surprise.

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

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

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

Man Exists Only Insofar As He Is Separated From His Surroundings. The Cranium Is A Space-traveler's Helmet. Stay Inside Or You Perish.

The Pleasures Of Writing Correspond Exactly To The Pleasures Of Reading

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

An Active And Creative Reader Is A Re-reader.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

And Yet I Adore Him. I Think He's Quite Crazy, And With No Place Or Occupation In Life, And Far From Happy, And Philosophically Irresponsible – And There Is Absolutely Nobody Like Him.

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 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.

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

There Was No Lo To Behold.

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.

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

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

There Is Nothing Dictators Hate So Much As That Unassailable, Eternally Elusive, Eternally Provoking Gleam. One Of The Main Reasons Why The Very Gallant Russian Poet Gumilev Was Put To Death By Lenin's Ruffians Thirty Odd Years Ago Was That During The Whole Ordeal, In The Prosecutor's Dim Office, In The Torture House, In The Winding Corridors That Led To The Truck, In The Truck That Took Him To The Place Of Execution, And At That Place Itself, Full Of The Shuffling Feet Of The Clumsy And Gloomy Shooting Squad, The Poet Kept Smiling.

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

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.

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.

The Breaking Of A Wave Cannot Explain The Whole Sea.

Breaking Promises

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

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 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.

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

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

She Was Like Marat Only With Nobody To Kill Her.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

In Answer To The Question: What Scenes One Would Like To Have Filmed Shakespeare In The Part Of The King's Ghost. The Beheading Of Louis The Sixteenth, The Drums Drowning His Speech On The Scaffold. Herman Melville At Breakfast, Feeling A Sardine To His Cat. Poe's Wedding. Lewis Carroll's Picnics. The Russians Leaving Alaska, Delighted With The Deal. Shot Of A Seal Applauding.

You Lose Your Immortality When You Lose Your Memory.

The Future Is But The Obsolete In Reverse.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Think It Is All A Matter Of Love.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

The Tiny Madman In His Padded Cell.

Solitude Is The Playfield Of Satan.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

He Broke My Heart. You Merely Broke My Life.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Religion Has The Same Relation To Man's Heavenly Condition That Mathematics Has To His Earthly One: Both The One And The Other Are Merely The Rules Of The Game. Belief In God And Belief In Numbers: Local Truth And Truth Of Location.

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

All Great Novels Are Great Fairy Tales.

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

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

A Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

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.

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

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

Could Have Been

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

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.

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.

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

In Reading, One Should Notice And Fondle Details.

Curiosity Is Insubordination In Its Purest Form.

Insubordination

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

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.

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

Solitude Was Corrupting Me.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

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

Genius Is Finding The Invisible Link Between Things.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Caress The Detail, The Divine Detail.

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

As Far As I Can Recall, The Initial Shiver Of Inspiration [for Lolita] Was Somehow Prompted By A Newspaper Story About An Ape In The Jardin Des Plantes, Who, After Months Of Coaxing By A Scientist, Produced The First Drawing Ever Charcoaled By An Animal: This Sketch Showed The Bars Of The Poor Creature's Cage.

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.

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

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.

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

Satire Is A Lesson, Parody Is A Game.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

We Are Most Artistically Caged.

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.

Nothing Is More Exhilarating Than Philistine Vulgarity.

But In My Arms She Was Always Lolita.

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

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.

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

...in 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.

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John C. Danforth

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