How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
But even so, the individual mystery remains to tantalize the memoirist. Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap. (1.2.3)
Here Nabokov seems to be saying that the point of writing a memoir is to figure out "the individual mystery." But it seems to us that this might be a bit of a red herring, and mighty subjective to boot. Each one of us "contains multitudes" (shout out to Mister Walt Whitman), and Nabokov knows this. So why try to solve the mystery when you know there won't ever be just one answer?
Quote #2
The following of such thematic designs through one's life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography. (1.3.3)
Stories (fiction or non-) are all about patterns and rhythms, so it's no surprise that Nabokov thinks of his own life this way.
Quote #3
...those large, gloomy, eminently bourgeois apartments that I have let to so many émigré families in my novels and short stories. (2.4.5)
In this moment, Nabokov makes himself a landlord, renting out his own family's post-exile Berlin apartments to his fictional characters, as if fictional characters share a similar fate to that of gone loved ones, living in the memories of the writer.