“For we die every day; oblivion thrives

Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives,

And our best yesterdays are now foul piles

Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files.

I’m ready to become a floweret

Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.

And I’ll turn down eternity unless

The melancholy and tenderness

Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;

The claret taillight of that dwindling plane

Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay

On running out of cigarettes; the way

You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime

Snails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,

This index card, this slender rubber band

Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,

Are found in Heaven by the newlydead

Stored in its strongholds through the years.”

-Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov