纳博科夫（Nabokov）的写作曾经很准确地观察到他的主题是人类生活的三重公式：过去的不可延展性，现在的不稳定性以及未来的不可预见性。
(Writing of Pushkin, Nabokov once observed quite accurately that his subject was the threefold formula of human life: the irretrievability of the past, the insatiability of the present, and the unforeseeability of the future.)