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

-Vladimir Nabokov

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Usually I Read Several

Vladimir Nabokov

...

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

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More From Vladimir Nabokov

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

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

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.

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.

And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust.

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

There Is Nothing More Atrociously Cruel Than An Adored Child.

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

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

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.

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

A Good Laugh Is The Best Pesticide.

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.

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

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.

Let All Of Life Be An Unfettered Howl.

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.

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

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.

He Broke My Heart. You Merely Broke My Life.

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

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

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.

Words Without Experience Are Meaningless.

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.

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

Do Those Clowns Really Believe What They Teach?

My Characters Are Galley Slaves.

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

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.

...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.

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.

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 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.

In And Out Of My Heart Flowed My Rainbow Blood.

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.

I Think It Is All A Matter Of Love.

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

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

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

And Presently I Was Driving Through The Drizzle Of The Dying Day, With The Windshield Wipers In Full Action But Unable To Cope With My Tears.

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

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

Genius Is Finding The Invisible Link Between Things.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Future Is But The Obsolete In Reverse.

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

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.

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

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

All Religions Are Based On Obsolete Terminology.

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.

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

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

It Is Strange That The Tactile Sense, Which Is So Infinitely Less Precious To Men Than Sight, Becomes At Critical Moments Our Main, If Not Only, Handle To Reality.

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.

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 Know More Than I Can Express In Words, And The Little I Can Express Would Not Have Been Expressed, Had I Not Known More.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 .

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.

A Change Of Environment Is The Traditional Fallacy Upon Which Doomed Loves, And Lungs, Rely.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Dear Jesus, Do Something.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Square Root Of I Is I.

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

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.

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

My Little Cup Brims With Tiddles.

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

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

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

The Days Of My Youth, As I Look Back On Them, Seem To Fly Away From Me In A Flurry Of Pale Repetitive Scraps Like Those Morning Snow Storms Of Used Tissue Paper That A Train Passenger Sees Whirling In The Wake Of The Observation Car.

I 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.

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

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

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.

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.

Solitude Was Corrupting Me.

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.

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.

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

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

Satire Is A Lesson, Parody Is A Game.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Could Also Distinguish The Glint Of A Special Puddle (the One Krug Had Somehow Perceived Through The Layer Of His Own Life), An Oblong Puddle Invariably Acquiring The Same Form After Every Shower Because Of The Constant Spatulate Shape Of A Depression In The Ground. Possibly Something Of The Kind May Be Said To Occur In Regard To The Imprint We Leave In The Intimate Texture Of Space. Twang. A Good Night For Nothing.

- 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.

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!

I Think She Always Nursed A Small Mad Hope.

In Reading, One Should Notice And Fondle Details.

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.

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

We Are Most Artistically Caged.

I Confess, I Do Not Believe In Time.

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.

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.

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

Suddenly For No Earthly Reason I Felt Immensely Sorry For Him And Longed To Say Something Real, Something With Wings And A Heart, But The Birds I Wanted Settled On My Shoulders And Head Only Later When I Was Alone And Not In Need Of Words.

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

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

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.

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!

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

We Think Not In Words But In Shadows Of Words.

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

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

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

Could Have Been

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

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.

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.

Play! Invent The World! Invent Reality!

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

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.

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.

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.

My Own Ultraviolet Darling. " Lolita

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns.

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!

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.

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

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

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 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.

She Was Like Marat Only With Nobody To Kill Her.

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.

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

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.

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

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

You See, She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go.

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.

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

...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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

When I Try To Analyze My Own Cravings, Motives, Actions And So Forth, I Surrender To A Sort Of Retrospective Imagination Which Feeds The Analytic Faculty With Boundless Alternatives And Which Causes Each Visualized Route To Fork And Re-fork Without End In The Maddeningly Complex Prospect Of My Past.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 . . .

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.

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.

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

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

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

But In My Arms She Was Always Lolita.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

A Sense Of Security, Of Well-being, Of Summer Warmth Pervades My Memory. That Robust Reality Makes A Ghost Of The Present. The Mirror Brims With Brightness; A Bumblebee Has Entered The Room And Bumps Against The Ceiling. Everything Is As It Should Be, Nothing Will Ever Change, Nobody Will Ever Die.

I 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.

Nymphets Do Not Occur In Polar Regions.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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