Pale Fire

by Vladimir Nabokov

The calendar says I had known him only for a few months but there exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time, independent of rotating, malicious music.

Our close friendship was on that higher, exclusively intellectual level where one can rest from emotional troubles, not share them.

Lost similes adrift without a string, Attached to nothing.

Ideas

God might choose His people but man should choose his expressions.”

The more lucid and overwhelming one’s belief in Providence, the greater the temptation to get it over with,

SHADE:

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

orbicle of jasp

The one who kills is always his victim’s inferior.

Thus any machine is a she to its fond user, and any fire (even a “pale” one!) is she to the fireman,

one syllable every two minutes.