“The cat was asleep in the stuffy room of the President’s daughter who was dreaming of not being able to find a certain pot of apple jelly which she knew was a ship she had once seen in Bervok and a sailor was leaning and spitting overboard, watching his spit fall, fall, fall, into the apple jelly of the heart-rending sea for her dream was shot with golden-yellow, as she had not put out the lamp, wishing to keep awake until her old father’s guests had gone.”

—Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister, 1947.