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 i… - Vladimir Nabokov

Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise.

And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me — my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift…I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing — yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy — yes, happy!

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.