Let us not look for the soul of Russia in the Russian novel: let us look for the individual genius. Look at the masterpiece, and not at the frame – and not at the faces of other people looking at the frame.
Everything, even what was saddest and most shameful in his past life, was overlaid with the deceptive charm of colours. He was horrified to realize how little he had used his eyes – for these colours moved across too vague a background and their outlines were singularly blurred.
The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales... literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.
For me a work of fiction exists only in so far 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 is the norm.
To love with all one’s soul and leave the rest to fate, was the simple rule she heeded.
On second thoughts, I still have it all done by Dr. Mollnar. His price is higher, but he is of course a much better dentist than you.
I am not handsome, I am not interesting, I am not talented. I am not even rich. But, Lise, I offer you everything I have, to the last blood corpuscle, to the last tear, everything. And, believe me, this is more than any genius can offer you because a genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do. I may not achieve happiness, but I know I shall do everything to make you happy.
So I lingered there, pretending, in front of my own self, that I had something to write.
Sundaes cause acne.
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. I was all covered with Quilty – with the feel of that tumble before the bleeding. The.
When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the act of attention might lead to our sinking involuntarily into the history of that object.
I felt curiously aloof from my own self.
I have hurt too much too many bodies with my twisted poor hands to be proud of them.
Can’t decide whether dolly has exceptional emotional control or none at all.
Martin was one of those people for whom a good book before sleep is something to look forward to all day. Such a person, upon happening to recall, amidst routine occupations, that on his bedside table a book is waiting for him, in perfect safety, feels a surge of inexpressible happiness.
I noticed, for instance, that dreams under the midnight sun tended to be highly coloured, and this my friend the photographer confirmed.
He would remove his glasses to beam at the past while massaging the lenses of the present.
And I’m happy. I’m happy that Conscience, the pimp of my sleepy reflections and projects, did not get at the critical secret. Today I am really remarkably happy.
But one day while disrupting the strata of sense and descending deep down to my wellspring I saw mirrored, besides my own self and the world, something else, something else, something else.
And the struggle began to seem muddled, unresolvable: I, the black sky, I, the lights, and the present minute – and the present minute went by. But who knows – perhaps, it was priceless.
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. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four foot ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores at the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.