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. 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. β¨ Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1960). Laughter in the Dark, p.7, New Directions Publishing
More Author Quotes
- The lost glove is happy. β¨ Vladimir Nabokov (2011). Pale Fire, p.15, Vintage
- 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 t β¦ βΆ
- I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.
- 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 β¦ βΆ
- ...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. β¨ Vladimir β¦ βΆ
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