Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale Fire, Ada and other Nabokov works here.
Talking over the ’phone to Joe Lavender (the owner of Villa Libitina who mistakes Gradus for a newspaper reporter), Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) pronounces the word “what” as “vot:”
During a conversation at the Faculty Club John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum:
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die - they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.
In the conversation at the Faculty Club John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum:
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die - they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.
Describing his rented house, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge):
Describing his rented house, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a note in the icebox warning with a bark that "no national specialties with odors hard to get rid of" should be placed therein:
When Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) visits Villa Libitina in Switzerland, Joe Lavender (the villa’s owner) mistakes Gradus for a reporter and calls him over the ’phone “a mucking snooping son of a bitch:”
When Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) visits Villa Libitina in Switzerland, Joe Lavender (the villa’s owner) mistakes Gradus for a reporter and calls him over the ’phone “a mucking snooping son of a bitch:”
In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his visit to Mrs. Z. (who saw a tall white mountain during her heart attack) and, at the end of the Canto, mentions some faint hope:
Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is
My firm conviction - "Darling, shut the door.
Had a nice trip?" Splendid - but what is more
Describing the picnic on Ada’s sixteenth birthday, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a ‘talisman’ that Greg Erminin had brought Ada from his very sick father on the previous day:
When Ada refuses to leave her sick husband, Andrey Vinelander, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls her "Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis:"
As had been peculiar to his nature even in the days of his youth, Van was apt to relieve a passion of anger and disappointment by means of bombastic and arcane utterances which hurt like a jagged fingernail caught in satin, the lining of Hell.