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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.

-Vladimir Nabokov

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There Is Nothing Dictators

Vladimir Nabokov

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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.

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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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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

You Lose Your Immortality When You Lose Your Memory.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Most Of The Dandelions Had Changed From Suns To Moons.

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

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.

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

Don't Touch Me; I'll Die If You Touch Me.

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.

My Only Grudge Against Nature Was That I Could Not Turn My Lolita Inside Out And Apply Voracious Lips To Her Young Matrix, Her Unknown Heart, Her Nacreous Liver, The Sea-grapes Of Her Lungs, Her Comely Twin Kidneys.

Why Do Those People Guess So Much And Shave So Little, And Are So Disdainful Of Hearing Aids?

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

And Really, The Reason We Think Of Death In Celestial Terms Is That The Visible Firmament, Especially At Night (above Our Blacked-out Paris With The Gaunt Arches Of Its Boulevard Exelmans And The Ceaseless Alpine Gurgle Of Desolate Latrines), Is The Most Adequate And Ever-present Symbol Of That Vast Silent Explosion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

...and The Red Sun Of Desire And Decision (the Two Things That Create A Live World) Rose Higher And Higher, While Upon A Succession Of Balconies A Succession Of Libertines, Sparkling Glass In Hand, Toasted The Bliss Of Past And Future Nights.

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 Pleasures Of Writing Correspond Exactly To The Pleasures Of Reading

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

Nymphets Do Not Occur In Polar Regions.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Play! Invent The World! Invent Reality!

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

Could Have Been

He Broke My Heart. You Merely Broke My Life.

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

…she Was, Obviously, One Of Those Women Whose Polished Words May Reflect A Book Club Or Bridge Club, Or Any Other Deadly Conventionality, But Never Her Soul.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The Good, The Admirable Reader Identifies Himself Not With The Boy Or The Girl In The Book, But With The Mind That Conceived And Composed That Book.

The 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.

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.

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

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

Solitude Was Corrupting Me.

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.

Nothing Is More Exhilarating Than Philistine Vulgarity.

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.

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

Words Without Experience Are Meaningless.

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.

All Great Novels Are Great Fairy Tales.

The Breaking Of A Wave Cannot Explain The Whole Sea.

Breaking Promises

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

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

I Was Weeping Again, Drunk On The Impossible Past.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

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.

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

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.

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.

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!

My Own Ultraviolet Darling. " Lolita

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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. . .

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

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

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.

Genius Is An African Who Dreams Up Snow.

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.

Theoretically There Is No Absolute Proof That One's Awakening In The Morning (the Finding Oneself Again In The Saddle Of One's Personality) Is Not Really A Quite Unprecedented Event, A Perfectly Original Birth.

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.

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

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 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.

There Was No Lo To Behold.

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

All Religions Are Based On Obsolete Terminology.

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

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.

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

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

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.

She Was Lo, Plain Lo, In The Morning, Standing Four Feet Ten In One Sock. She Was Lola In Slacks. She Was Dolly At School. She Was Dolores On The Dotted Line. But In My Arms She Was Always Lolita.

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.

Revelation Can Be More Perilous Than Revolution.

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.

My Lolita Remarked: "you Know, What's So Dreadful About Dying Is That You Are Completely On Your Own"; And It Struck Me, As My Automaton Knees Went Up And Down, That I Simply Did Not Know A Thing About My Darling's Mind And That Quite Possibly, Behind The Awful Juvenile Cliches, There Was In Her A Garden And A Twilight, And A Palace Gate - Dim And Adorable Regions Which Happened To Be Lucidly And Absolutely Forbidden To Me, In My Polluted Rags And Miserable Convulsions.

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

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

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

I Confess, I Do Not Believe In Time.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

To Play Safe, I Prefer To Accept Only One Type Of Power: The Power Of Art Over Trash, The Triumph Of Magic Over The Brute.

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.

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.

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

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

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

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.

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 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.

Perhaps If The Future Existed, Concretely And Individually, As Something That Could Be Discerned By A Better Brain, The Past Would Not Be So Seductive: Its Demands Would Be Balanced By Those Of The Future.

Because You Took Advantage Of My Disadvantage.

Dear Jesus, Do Something.

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 .

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

You Have To Be An Artist And A Madman, A Creature Of Infinite Melancholy, With A Bubble Of Hot Poison In Your Loins And A Super-voluptuous Flame Permanently Aglow In Your Subtle Spine (oh, How You Have To Cringe And Hide!), In Order To Discern At Once, By Ineffable Signs―the Slightly Feline Outline Of A Cheekbone, The Slenderness Of A Downy Limbs, And Other Indices Which Despair And Shame And Tears Of Tenderness Forbid Me To Tabulate―the Little Deadly Demon Among The Wholesome Children; She Stands Unrecognized By Them And Unconscious Herself Of Her Fantastic Power.

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.

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

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.

Literature, Real Literature, Must Not Be Gulped Down Like Some Potion Which May Be Good For The Heart Or Good For The Brain—the Brain, That Stomach Of The Soul. Literature Must Be Taken And Broken To Bits, Pulled Apart, Squashed—then Its Lovely Reek Will Be Smelt In The Hollow Of The Palm, It Will Be Munched And Rolled Upon The Tongue With Relish; Then, And Only Then, Its Rare Flavor Will Be Appreciated At Its True Worth And The Broken And Crushed Parts Will Again Come Together In Your Mind And Disclose The Beauty Of A Unity To Which You Have Contributed Something Of Your Own Blood.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

...for The Human Brain Can Become The Best Torture House Of All Those It Has Invented, Established And Used In A Millions Of Years, In Millions Of Lands, On Millions Of Howling Creatures.

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

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

I Believe The Poor Fierce-eyed Child Had Figured Out That With A Mere Fifty Dollars In Her Purse She Might Somehow Reach Broadway Or Hollywood - Or The Foul Kitchen Of A Diner (help Wanted) In A Dismal Ex-prairie State, With The Wind Blowing, And The Stars Blinking, And The Cars, And The Bars, And The Barmen, And Everything Soiled, Torn, Dead.

There 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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