Actually, VN's phrase was not clear nor was it, in fact, a reply. Instead of revealing any particular wish (the interview took place on his 72th birthday), Nabokov gave it wings to harness it to his vision, thereby adding, perhaps accidentaly, a new meaning to the ancient lines. He seems to have turned a deaf ear to what, at that time, must have been a relatively fashionable show (the musical was short-lived).

* Although these lines, as nursery rhymes, were first published in England in 1605 [Roud #20004] Wikipedia also informs that in 1971 there was a Broadway musical, based on Eve Merriam's book "The Inner City Mother Goose," with a song that began: "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, and rich man and poor man in peace would abide."

More wikidata: "The first recognisable ancestor of the rhyme was recorded in William Camden's (1551-1623) Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine,
printed in 1605, which contained the lines: "If wishes were thrushes beggers would eat birds".[The reference to horses was first in James Carmichael's Proverbs in Scots printed in 1628, which included the lines: "And if wishes were horses, pure [poor] men wald ride".The first mention of beggars is in John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs in 1670, in the form "If wishes would bide, beggers would ride".The first versions with close to the modern wording was in James Kelly's Scottish Proverbs, Collected and Arranged in 1721, with the wording "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride".The modern rhyme above was probably the combination of two of many versions and was collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s."

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