Nabokov Quotes

Nabokov Quote of the day

I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.

Genius is finding the invisible link between things.

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

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

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.

Don't touch me

Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle...

Two silent time zones had now merged to form the standard time of one man's fate

For some reason, I kept seeing it—it trembled and silkily glowed on my damp retina—a radiant child of twelve, sitting on a threshold, "pinging" pebbles at an empty can.

The best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style. [Vogue, interview, 1969]

Do not be angry with the rain