For life has worn me down: continual uneasiness, concealment of my knowledge, pretense, fear, a painful straining of all my nerves — not to let down,… - Vladimir Nabokov

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For life has worn me down: continual uneasiness, concealment of my knowledge, pretense, fear, a painful straining of all my nerves — not to let down, not to ring out … and even to this day I still feel an ache in that part of my memory where the very beginning of this effort is recorded, that is, the occasion when I first understood that things which to me had seemed natural were actually forbidden, impossible, that any thought of them was criminal.