Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love - from my heart, from the tender nucle… - Vladimir Nabokov

Monstrously Remote: “Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I immediately draw radii from my love — from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter — to monstrously remote points of the universe… the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time.” – Speak Memory (1966)

For we die every day; oblivion thrives
Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives,
And our best yesterdays are now foul piles
Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files.

a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.

I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.