Speak, Memory--Ch. 4

"When I learned these later developments, I experienced a queer shock; it was as if life had impinged upon my creative rights by wriggling on beyond the subjective limits so elegantly and economically set by childhood memories that I thought I had signed and sealed." --Vladimir Nabokov, page 93

Childhood is the most unspoiled time in our lives; we don't have to know how bad for your health all those cookies are, we don't have to know that our parents really have to go to the store and get our toys instead of Santa, and we especially don't have to know the whole story behind people's pasts. In this quote, Nabokov is referring to learning about the lives of two of his childhood art teachers. Finding out something new about someone, especially something negative, can alter a memory beyond recognition. I think that Nabokov made a smart choice in including these discoveries in the book after he described what it was like to know them as a child.