“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.”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Cheating, Diaster, first lines of books
“I must keep quiet for a little space and then walk very slowly along that bright sand of pain, toward that blue, blue wave. What bliss there is in blueness. I never knew how blue blueness could be. What a mess life has been. Now I know everything. Coming, coming, coming to drown me. There it is. How…”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Blue, Colors, Dying, To Die, Things People Say In Books When They Are Dying
“It really was blue: purple-blue in the distance, peacock-blue coming nearer, diamond-blue where the wave caught the light. The foam toppled over, ran, slowed down, then receded, leaving a smooth mirror on the wet sand, which the next wave flooded again.”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Descriptions of the Ocean, Ocean, Sea, The Beach, Water
“'So much the better,' thought Margot, and suddenly she felt extremely elated. When she had sent off the letter she had anticipated a far more trivial consequence: he refuses to show it, wife gets wild, stamps, has a fit. So the first suspicions are roused and that eases the way. But now chance had h…”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Machiavellian Machinations, Overwhelmed
“Now, as he strolled along in the mild sunshine, he realized that the reckoning was about to begin. When he saw again the house in which he had lived for so long with Elisabeth; when he went up in the lift in which the nurse with his baby in her arms, and his wife, looking very pale and happy, had go…”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Reckoning, Vanishing Point
“Her gaiety, too, was like her mother's—a singular unobtrusive gaiety. It was just a quiet delight in one's own existence with a faint note of humorous surprise at being alive at all—yes, that was the tenor of it: mortal gaiety.”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Lack of Gravity, Mortal Gaiety, Simple
“She was a clinging little soul, docile and gentle. Her love was of the lily variety; but now and then it burst into flame and at such times Albinus was deluded into thinking that he had no need of any other love-mate.”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Love, Love Delusions
“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.”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.comTagged: Condensed, Details, No Point So What, We Might As Well