For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
—Nabokov, The Eye
A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life: one sense in every passing instant a parting of ways, a “thus” and an “otherwise,” with innumerable dazzling zigzags bifurcating and trifurcating against the dark background of the past.
—Nabokov, The Eye
