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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.

-Vladimir Nabokov

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Freudism And All It

Vladimir Nabokov

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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.

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

All Religions Are Based On Obsolete Terminology.

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

He Was Powerless Because He Had No Precise Desire, And This Tortured Him Because He Was Vainly Seeking Something To Desire. He Could Not Even Make Himself Stretch Out His Hand To Switch On The Light. The Simple Transition From Intention To Action Seemed An Unimaginable Miracle.

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

...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.

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

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.

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

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

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.

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

I Was Weeping Again, Drunk On The Impossible Past.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Nymphets Do Not Occur In Polar Regions.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

We Think Not In Words But In Shadows Of Words.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

An Active And Creative Reader Is A Re-reader.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Play! Invent The World! Invent Reality!

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.

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.

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.

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

I Loved You. I Was A Pentapod Monster, But I Loved You. I Was Despicable And Brutal, And Turpid, And Everything, Mais Je T’aimais, Je T’aimais!

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.

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

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.

I Cannot Help Feeling There Is Something Essentially Wrong About Love. Friends May Quarrel Or Drift Apart, Close Relations Too, But There Is Not This Pang, This Pathos, This Fatality Which Clings To Love. Friendship Never Has That Doomed Look. Why, What Is The Matter? I Have Not Stopped Loving You, But Because I Cannot Go On Kissing Your Dim Dear Face, We Must Part, We Must Part.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I Am Surrounded By Some Sort Of Wretched Specters, Not By People. They Torment Me As Can Torment Only Senseless Visions, Bad Dreams, Dregs Of Delirium, The Drivel Of Nightmares And Everything That Passes Down Here For Real Life.

Imagination, The Supreme Delight Of The Immortal And The Immature, Should Be Limited. In Order To Enjoy Life, We Should Not Enjoy It Too Much.

The 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

- 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.

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

He Broke My Heart. You Merely Broke My Life.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

But In My Arms She Was Always Lolita.

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

There Is Nothing More Atrociously Cruel Than An Adored Child.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Little Cup Brims With Tiddles.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

...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.

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

Most Of The Dandelions Had Changed From Suns To Moons.

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

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.

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.

Let All Of Life Be An Unfettered Howl.

The Tiny Madman In His Padded Cell.

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.

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

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

I Confess, I Do Not Believe In Time.

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

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

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. . .

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Let The Credulous And The Vulgar Continue To Believe That All Mental Woes Can Be Cured By A Daily Application Of Old Greek Myths To Their Private Parts.

I 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Solitude Is The Playfield Of Satan.

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

Revelation Can Be More Perilous Than Revolution.

The Fire You Rubbed Left Its Brand On The Most Vulnerable, Most Vicious And Tender Point Of My Body. Now I Have To Pay For Your Rasping The Red Rash Too Strongly, Too Soon, As Charred Wood Has To Pay For Burning. When I Remain Without Your Caresses, I Lose All Control Of My Nerves, Nothing Exists Any More Than The Ecstasy Of Friction, The Abiding Effect Of Your Sting, Of Your Delicious Poison.

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.

Nothing Is More Exhilarating Than Philistine Vulgarity.

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.

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.

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.

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

Our Best Yesterdays Are Now Foul Piles Of Crumpled Names.

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.

My Heart Was A Hysterical Unreliable Organ.

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

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

The Rich Philistinism Emanating From Advertisements Is Due Not To Their Exaggerating (or Inventing) The Glory Of This Or That Serviceable Article But To Suggesting That The Acme Of Human Happiness Is Purchasable And That Its Purchase Somehow Ennobles The Purchaser.

Although I Could Never Get Used To The Constant State Of Anxiety In Which The Guilty, The Great, And The Tenderhearted Live, I Felt I Was Doing My Best In The Way Of Mimicry.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Future Is But The Obsolete In Reverse.

A Wise Reader Reads The Book Of Genius Not With His Heart, Not So Much With His Brain, But With His Spine. It Is There That Occurs The Telltale Tingle.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In And Out Of My Heart Flowed My Rainbow Blood.

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.

I Have The European Urge To Use My Feet When A Drive Can Be Dispensed With.

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.

If Possible, Be Russian. And Live In Another Country. Play Chess. Be An Active Trader Between Languages. Carry Precious Metals From One To The Other. Remind Us Of Stravinsky. Know The Names Of Plants And Flying Creatures. Hunt Gauzy Wings With Snares Of Gauze. Make Science Pay Tribute. Have A Butterfly Known By Your Name.

I 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.

Do Those Clowns Really Believe What They Teach?

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

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

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.

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.

In Reading, One Should Notice And Fondle Details.

There Was No Lo To Behold.

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

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Barbara Corcoran

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