A Passage from Nabokov:

"In those years, that marvelous mess of constellations, nebulae, interstellar gaps and all the rest of the awesome show provoked in me an indescribable sense of nausea, of utter panic, as if I were hanging from earth upside down on the brink of infinite space, with terrestrial gravity still holding me by the heels but about to release me any moment." (Pg. 226 - 227)

I found this passage interesting because it reminds me of a passage at the very beginning of the book: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" (pg. 19). It seems to me that in these two passages, Nabokov is acknowledging how meaningless, short, and unimportant one human life is. We are nothing in comparison to the world around us, the universe around us, just as we are nothing compared with all that has come before and all that will come after. He tells us in the very first line of the first chapter that his story doesn't matter, and he reminds us throughout the work. An odd approach to trying to convince someone to care... Nabokov knows that there's no real reason for us to want to read his life story, but he tells it anyway in case we're somehow drawn in. And maybe it's this honesty that makes us want to know more.