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Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Book by Vladimir Nabokov · 9 quotes · Heaven, Love, Bluebeard

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Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Quotes

“His father saw him off. Demon had dyed his hair a blacker black. He wore a diamond ring blazing like a Caucasian ridge. His long, black, blue-ocellated wings trailed and quivered in the ocean breeze. Lyudi oglyadïvalis’ (people turned to look). A temporary Tamara, all kohl, kabesk rouge, and flamingo-boa, could not decide what would please her demon lover more—just moaning and ignoring his handsome son or acknowledging bluebeard’s virility in morose Van, who could not stand her Caucasian perfume, Granial Maza, seven dollars a bottle.”

Bluebeard
Book:Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
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“Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges.”

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Book:Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
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“Only a Chinaman or a retarded child can imagine being met, in that Next-Installment World, to the accompaniment of all sorts of tail-wagging and groveling of welcome, by the mosquito executed eighty years ago upon one’s bare leg, which has been amputated since then and now, in the wake of the gesticulating mosquito, comes back, stomp, stomp, stomp, here I am, stick me on.”

Heaven
Book:Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
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