Pale Fire Quotes
"The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun."
"A syllogism: other men die; but I am not another; therefore I'll not die."
"Time means succession, and succession, change: Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange schedules of sentiment."
"I cannot understand why from the lake I could make out our front porch when I’d take Lake Road to school, whilst now, although no tree has intervened, I look but fail to see even the roof."
"I was an infant when my parents died. They both were ornithologists. I’ve tried so often to evoke them that today I have a thousand parents."
"No free man needs a God; but was I free? How fully I felt nature glued to me and how my childish palate loved the taste half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!"
"And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hear your steps upstairs, and all is right, my dear."
"And there’s the wall of sound: the nightly wall raised by a trillion crickets in the fall."
"The regular vulgarian, I daresay, is happier: he sees the Milky Way only when making water."
"There is no bound to the measure of grace which man may be able to receive."
"Everybody knows how given to regicide Zemblans are."
"Higher up on the same wooded hill stood, and still stands I trust, Dr. Sutton’s old clapboard house."
"Could a dwarf in the police force pose as a pigtailed child?"
"The dead, the gentle dead—who knows?—In tungsten filaments abide."
"And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole town with innumerable lights."
"Streetlamps are numbered, and maybe number nine-hundred-ninety-nine is an old friend of mine."
"And when above the livid plain forked lightning plays, therein may dwell the torments of a Tamerlane."
"Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world."
"A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony."
"The bird of lines 1-4 and 131 is again with us. It will reappear in the ultimate line of the poem."
"He who displayed such fastidious care in his choice of fellow ramblers liked to trudge with the gaunt solemn German."
"One can well imagine how the Shades dreaded a recrudescence of the poltergeist nuisance."
"One’s just anger is mitigated by the satisfaction of foreknowing that the engagé gentleman will be less worried about the fate of my friend’s poem after reading the passage commented here."
"All artists have been born in what they call a sorry age; mine is the worst of all."
"In nature’s strife when fortitude prevails, the victim falters and the victor fails."
"The more I weigh, the less I understand the true nature of the universe."
"Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences."
"All the time he was coming nearer, and I did not know what was destined to unfold."
"Man’s life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece."
"The bristling of thrilled little hairs obstructed his barbering; but since both Alfreds certainly used an Ordinary Razor, and John Shade an ancient Gillette, the discrepancy may have been due to the use of different instruments."
"I have a certain liking, I admit, for Parody, that last resort of wit."
"Respect facts. I have it from him that the widely circulated stuff about the nun is a vulgar pro-Extremist fabrication."
"Kings do not die—they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"As usual he started his blurry daily existence by blowing his nose."
"He had never visited New York before; but as many near-cretins, he was above novelty."
"He had a brimming cup and half a saucerful of coffee at a crowded and wet counter."
"His lips moving like wrestling worms, he read about all kinds of things."
"The United States was about to launch its first atom-driven merchant ship."
"Last night, in Newark, an apartment house at 555 South Street was hit by a thunderbolt."
"The Rachel Jewelry Company in Brooklyn advertised in agate type for a jewelry polisher."
"Asked about the Soviet exhibition at the New York Coliseum, Carl Sandburg, a poet, replied."
"In a restaurant on Broadway he consumed a large portion of pinkish pork with sauerkraut."
"Here he is, this creature ready to commit a monstrous act—and coarsely enjoying a coarse meal!"
"We must assume, I think, that the forward projection of what imagination he had, stopped at the act."
"Gradus is now much nearer to us in space and time than he was in the preceding cantos."
"We can fill in the bleak oblong of his face with most of its elements such as thick eyebrows."
"We see his melancholy nose with its crooked ridge and grooved tip."
"He could read, write and reckon, he was endowed with a modicum of self-awareness."
"I have considered in my earlier note the particular dislikes, and hence the motives."
"The fact that his weapon was a real one, and his quarry a highly developed human being."
"Gradus would not have killed anybody had he not derived pleasure not only from the imagined act."
"The garden took only the battered black briefcase we know: it contained a clean nylon shirt."
"Upon arriving after five at the New Wye airport he drank two papercupfuls of nice cold milk."