How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words! (1.2.3)
Quote #5
She cherished her own past with the same retrospective fervor that I now do her image and my past.
For the Nabokovs, remembering is the family sport. The memories recounted aren't just Vladimir's. He's willing to take anything that's not nailed down, as long as it's in service of the story.
Quote #6
A cast of my father's hand and a watercolor picture of his grave in the Greek-Catholic cemetery of Tegel, now in East Berlin, shared a shelf with émigré writers' books, so prone to disintegration in their cheap paper covers. A soapbox covered with green cloth supported the dim little photographs in crumbling frames she liked to have near her couch. She did not really need them, for nothing had been lost. (2.4.5)
Nothing had been lost...or had it? As we age, our memories degrade or fade away. Objects (as Nabokov notes, in describing his mother's ring or his tutor's tea set) seem to help us remember or recover things we'd otherwise forget.