Quotes from book

Pale Fire

“For we die every day; oblivion thrives”

“This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious.”

“In due time history will have denounced everybody.”

“What moment in that gradual decay
Does resurrection choose? What year?
Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?
Are some less lucky, or do all escape?
A syllogism; other men die
But I am not another: therefore I'll not die.”

“I certainly do speak Russian. You see, it was the fashionable language par excellence, much more than French, among the nobles of Zembla at least.”

“The heating system was a farce, depending as it did on registers in the floor wherefrom the tepid exhalations of a throbbing and groaning basement furnace were transmitted to the rooms with the faintness of a moribund's last breath.”

“True art is above false honor.”

“You have hal…… real bad, chum.”

“No free man needs a God; but was I free?”

“for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”

“If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.”

“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.”

“Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye.”

“I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.”

“Solitude is the playfield of Satan.”

“My God died young. Theolatry i found
Degrading, and its premises, unsound.
No free man needs God; but was I free?”

“All religions are based on obsolete terminology.”

“do what only a true artist can do… pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation”

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
by the false azure in the windowpane;”