- "THE cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." (1.1.1) This philosophically meaty opener is a signal: we're going on quite the trip.
- Nabokov tells of a young man who, watching a family movie made before he was born, sees in it an empty baby carriage, his destined comfy spot. But his absence from it is unsettling: "as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated." (1.1.1)
- He talks of the importance of seeing the "two eternities of darkness" as something to actively rebel against. He has, he writes, tried everything but suicide. Turning his childhood memories upside and shaking them—that's the engine for this ambitious book.