Leslie Daniels > Quotes

“Nabokov changed my life," Max said. "I was going to be a writer, and then I read Lolita and I decided to go to law school instead. It looked easier.”
― Daniels, Leslie

“I knew I would stay in this town when I found the blue enamel pot floating in the lake. The pot led me to the house, the house led me to the book, the book to the lawyer, the lawyer to the whorehouse, the whorehouse to science, and from science I joined the world.”
― Leslie Daniels, Cleaning Nabokov's House

“I told them what I had discovered about Nabokov's sentences: Because the word string and the thoughts behind the words are so original, the reader's brain can't jump ahead. There is no opportunity to make assumptions, no mental leapfrogging to the end of the sentence. So the reader is suspended in the perfect moment of now. You can only experience now. The sentences celebrate the absolute instant of creation. "It takes your breath away.”
― Daniels, Leslie

“Lust is like a robin attacking his reflection in a pane of glass again and again.”
― Leslie Daniels, Cleaning Nabokov's House

“The middle of life has these cul-de-sac days. In your twenties you think, Surely I am going somewhere, and later--as in now--you think, Nope.”
― Leslie Daniels, Cleaning Nabokov's House