Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.

I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.

a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.

I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.

Stirless, I stand at the window, and in the black bowl of the sky glows like a golden drop of honey the mellow moon

Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English.

Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be

And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.

Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.

No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.

The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.

The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition

His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.

The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.

A good laugh is the best pesticide.

A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.

All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .

I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.

Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.

Look at this tangle of thorns.

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

The tiny madman in his padded cell.

Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.

My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.

I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.

But in my arms she was always Lolita.

It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.

All religions are based on obsolete terminology.

while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.

He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.

I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.

Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.

The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.

Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.