How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #7
And I thought of all I had missed in my country, of the things I would not have omitted to note and treasure, had I suspected before that my life was to veer in such a violent way. (13.3.3)
The whole book is full of the joys and oddities of Nabokov's St. Petersburg childhood. It's almost as if he's trying to piece together everything he's lost.
Quote #8
I would listen to my heart knocking and feel the blind drizzle on my face and hear, in the distance, the broken sounds of the game, and think of myself as of a fabulous exotic being in an English footballer's disguise, composing verse in a tongue nobody understood about a remote country nobody knew. (13.4.3)
Even though Vladimir defends himself from literary, communist-sympathizing Nesbit's ribbing for wasting time playing sports, he actually uses the time to romanticize himself, to figure out a way to feel better about his life as a man without a country. "A fabulous exotic [...] in a footballer's disguise"? Sure! Whatever works, Vlad.
Quote #9
"I suppose it would be easy for a detached observer to poke fun at all those hardly palpable people who imitated in foreign cities a dead civilization" (14.2.4)
Émigrés often cling to each other, looking for a sense of their lost homes. It can seem ridiculous—trying to hold onto something that will never reemerge—but it can also provide hope and support where elsewhere there's none.