Geometric Construction of Crystal Bases

We realize the crystal associated to the quantized enveloping algebras with a symmetric generalized Cartan matrix as a set of Lagrangian subvarieties of the cotangent bundle of the quiver variety. As a by-product, we give a counterexample to the conjecture of Kazhdan--Lusztig on the irreducibility of the characteristic variety of the intersection cohomology sheaves associated with the Schubert cells of type A and also to the similar problem asked by Lusztig on the characteristic variety of the perverse sheaves corresponding to canonical bases.