- "The years are passing, my dear, and presently nobody will know what you and I know," Nabokov writes, addressing his wife in this final chapter of the book. (15.1.1)
- He wants to catch and hold the past, and brings out several images from his final years in Europe as a Russian émigré.
- He remembers in May of 1934, walking home from the maternity hospital in Berlin, his wife having just given birth to their son.
- He takes time to observe and describe the streets, their quiet beauty at dawn.
- "Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love—from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter—to monstrously remote points of the universe." (15.1.4)
- Nabokov explains that thinking of the tenderness of love without its life circumstance is impossible for him.
- He compares it to people who have O.C.D., and must touch a doorknob a particular amount of times before continuing on.
- He thinks of each of his past memories carefully, so that he know where everyone is standing, what the light looked like, every detail he can remember, before being able to turn his attention to anything else.
- "I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming." (15.1.4)
- His wife remembers discovering their newborn son's fingernails, his body and newness.
- He compares the miracle of birth to a person looking at a pile of leaves and sticks, only to see, suddenly, a butterfly camouflaged there.