Pale Fire

“Dear Jesus, do something.”

“All colors made me happy: even gray.My eyes were such that literally theyTook photographs. ”

“The sun is a thief: she lures the seaand robs it. The moon is a thief:he steals his silvery light from the sun.The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.”

“We are most artistically caged.”

“A thousand years ago five minutes wereEqual to forty ounces of fine sand.Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime andInfinite aftertime: above your headThey close like giant wings, and you are dead.”

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slainBy the false azure in the windowpane;I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and ILived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.And from the inside, too, I'd duplicateMyself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glassHang all the furniture above the grass,And how delightful when a fall of snowCovered my glimpse of lawn and reached up soAs to make chair and bed exactly standUpon that snow, out in that crystal land!”

“There was a time in my demented youthWhen somehow I suspected that the truthAbout survival after death was knownTo every human being: I aloneKnew nothing, and a great conspiracyOf books and people hid the truth from me.”

“We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable.”

“And blood-black nothingness began to spin. A system of cells interlinked, within cells interlinked, within cells interlinked within one stem. And dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played.”

“All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.”

“The lost glove is happy.”

“My God died young. Theolatry i foundDegrading, and its premises, unsound.No free man needs God; but was I free?”

“And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.”

“If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.”

“All religions are based on obsolete terminology.”

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane...”

“Solitude is the playfield of Satan.”

“Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business centre hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord.”

“do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation”

“for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”

“Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye.”

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slainBy the false azure in the windowpane;I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and ILived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.”

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

“The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.”

“Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed, 270  My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blestMy Admirable butterfly! ExplainHow could you, in the gloam of Lilac Lane,Have let uncouth, hysterical John ShadeBlubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?”

“Do those clowns really believe what they teach?”

“There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.”

“that is his head, containing a brain of a different brand than that of the synthetic jellies preserved in the skulls around him”

“On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart.”

“I think she always nursed a small mad hope.”