Quotes About Loss

Mr. Wilson affirms that the only characteristic Nabokov trait in my translation (aside from an innate sado-masochistic urge to torture both the reader and himself, as Mr. Wilson puts it in a clumsy attempt to stick a particularly thick and rusty pin into my effigy) is my addiction to rare and unfamiliar words. It does not occur to him that I may have rare and unfamiliar things to convey; that is his loss.

He broke my heart. You merely broke my life

Just 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.

I have nothing but very sad associations with the Old and rotting World. No colored ads in your magazines will change the situation.' 'My

Alas, the objects I had assembled wander away. The young poplar dims and takes off to return where it had been fetched from. The brick wall dissolves. The house draws in its little balconies one by one, then turns, and floats away. Everything floats away. Harmony and meaning vanish. The world irks me again with its variegated void.

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three

Mama mea, femeie fotogenic?, a murit în modul cel mai absurd (picnic, tr?snet) când aveam trei ani ÅŸi, în afara unui nor de c?ldur? în umbra trecutului, ea n-a l?sat nici o urm? pe drumurile pustii ale amintirii peste care a apus soarele copil?riei mele.

Living does mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case, mere possibilities of improvement.

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses

so that beautiful idea, which otherwise would have lingered on and perhaps found a wall on which to hang and blossom, had strangely faded and shrivelled in the course of the last week.

Blunders, gropings, disappointment; surely the Cupid serving him was left-handed, with a weak chin and no imagination. And alongside these feeble romances there had been hundreds of girls of whom he had dreamed but whom he had never got to know; they had just slid past him, leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is: a distant lone tree against golden heavens; ripples of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a thing quite impossible to capture

I could not bring myself to touch him in order to make sure he was really dead. He looked it: a quarter of his face gone, and two flies beside themselves with a dawning sense of unbelievable luck.

?i eu priveam, o priveam È™i am înÈ›eles, clar, aÈ™a cum È™tiu c? o s? mor, c? o iubisem cum nu iubisem nimic din ceea ce v?zusem sau imaginasem pe p?mânt sau sperasem s? întâlnesc altundeva. Nu mai era decât adierea slab? a violetei È™i ecoul de frunz? moart? al nimfetei peste care m? rostogolisem cu asemenea strig?te în trecut.

Something was destroyed forever [...], everything would henceforward be tainted with a poisonous flavour of doubt

He tried to recall his best moments with her, but those moments were poisoned forever.

No," she said. "No, honey, no." She had never called me honey before. "No," she said, "it is quite out of the question. I would sooner go back to Cue. I mean—" She groped for words. I supplied them mentally ("He broke my heart. You merely broke my life").

Y entonces supe que lo más punzante no era la ausencia de Lolita a mi lado, sino la ausencia de su voz en ese concierto

For as we know from dreams it is so hard To speak to our dear dead! They disregard Our apprehension, queaziness and shame - The awful sense that they're not quite the same.

compuse un madrigal al negro humo de sus pestañas, al pálido gris de sus ojos inexpresivos, a las cinco pecas asímetricas de su nariz respingona, al vello rubio de sus miembros tostados; pero lo rompí y ahora no puedo recordarlo.

Los veinticinco años que había vivido desde entonces se empequeñecieron hasta convertirse en un latido agónico y luego desaparecer.

On z?ama? mi serce. A Ty mi z?ama?e? tylko ?ycie.

She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago

Mi coprii la faccia con la mano e piansi le lacrime più cocenti che avessi mai versato. Le sentii serpeggiare tra le dita e giù per il mento, e scottarmi, e mi si chiuse il naso, e non riuscivo a smettere, e poi lei mi toccò il polso. «Se mi tocchi muoio» dissi. «Sei sicura che non verrai con me? Non c'è speranza che tu venga? Dimmi soltanto questo». «No» rispose. «No, caro, no». Non mi aveva mai chiamato caro.

Moth holes had appeared in the plush of matrimonial comfort.