I should allow only my heart to have imagination; and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's personal truth.
Vladimir NabokovDevices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.
Vladimir NabokovWhen I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.
Vladimir NabokovJust like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.
Vladimir Nabokov