Bullet points between pages 3 - 41
* In the foreword nabokov admits that the chapters were written for numerous publications not in order and he faced a challenge putting them into a chronology as well as making sure he could do research on his family, which he improved on between the first editions and the following versions of the book
* He describes the process of trying to go back in time to discover memories as one fraught with frustration:
"I have journeyed back in thought - with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went - to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits." pg18
* He places his early years in the context of a Russia at war with Japan (1905) and there is a story about a general who comes to his house as a child and uses matchsticks to demonstrate the difference between a calm and stormy sea who he then meets during the Russian civil war again asking for a light for a cigarette as he tries to flee the red forces. The way he talks of the double meeting is incredibly Proustian:
"The following of such thematic designs through one's life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography." pg23
* He was very close to his mother because of numerous childhood illnesses and the same ability to see words and colours and a shared passion for mathematics
* The years then skip past with the first world war, the revolution and exile for his family being described in a sentence. The constant through all of those events is his mother who he describes in loving detail as a widower wearing both her own and her husband's wedding rings
