The Best Vladimir Nabokov quotes

T)here exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time. — Vladimir Nabokov

Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. — Vladimir Nabokov

A person hoping to become A poet must hAve the cApAcity of thinking of severAl things At A time. — Vladimir Nabokov

How can I write about this when I am afraid of not having time to finish and of stirring up all these thoughts in vain? — Vladimir Nabokov

The calendar says I had known him only a few months but there exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time, independent of rotating, malicious music. — Vladimir Nabokov

As to the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of space–time certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs. — Vladimir Nabokov

Time is but memory in the making. — Vladimir Nabokov

Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill–tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies. — Vladimir Nabokov

Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval. — Vladimir Nabokov

Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple–these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat. — Vladimir Nabokov

While the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. — Vladimir Nabokov

A philistine is a full–grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time. — Vladimir Nabokov

Time means succession, and succession, change: Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange Schedules of sentiment. — Vladimir Nabokov

I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading. — Vladimir Nabokov

Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst. — Vladimir Nabokov

Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind? — Vladimir Nabokov

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

I have never seen a more lucid, more lonely, better balanced mad mind than mine. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

My mind lay limp in an empty world. — Vladimir Nabokov

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. — Vladimir Nabokov

Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness. — Vladimir Nabokov

There is nothing louder than an American hotel; and, mind you, this was supposed to be a quiet, cozy, old–fashioned, homey place–’gracious living’ and all that stuff. — Vladimir Nabokov

The more gifted and talkative one’s characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind. — Vladimir Nabokov

Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars. — Vladimir Nabokov

For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. — Vladimir Nabokov

My heart seemed everywhere at once. — Vladimir Nabokov

My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ. — Vladimir Nabokov

In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood. — Vladimir Nabokov

The mind writes with a pen, the heart, with a pencil. — Vladimir Nabokov

My taut heart lurches heavily, like a sack in a cart, clattering downhill, towards a cliff, towards an abyss! It can’t be stopped! — Vladimir Nabokov

My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French. — Vladimir Nabokov

His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss. — Vladimir Nabokov

No jewels, save my eyes, do I own, but I have a rose which is even softer than my rosy lips. And a quiet youth said: ‘There is nothing softer than your heart.’ And I lowered my gaze… — Vladimir Nabokov

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… — Vladimir Nabokov

I should allow only my heart to have imagination; and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one’s personal truth. — Vladimir Nabokov

I’m a radiant void. I’m convalescing after a long and dreadful illness…I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended […] — Vladimir Nabokov

She groped for words. I supplied them mentally (‘He broke my heart. You merely broke my life’). — Vladimir Nabokov

I think it is all a matter of love. — Vladimir Nabokov

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other… — Vladimir Nabokov

I love you, I’m waiting for you unbearably. — Vladimir Nabokov

My solemn exasperation was to her the silence of love. — Vladimir Nabokov

To begin with, let us take the following motto…Literature is Love. Now we can continue. — Vladimir Nabokov

I thInk It Is all a matter of love the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger It Is. — Vladimir Nabokov

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. — Vladimir Nabokov

If sex is the sermon made of art, love is the lady of that tower. — Vladimir Nabokov

I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita. — Vladimir Nabokov

Non–russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. — Vladimir Nabokov

There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity. — Vladimir Nabokov

We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. — Vladimir Nabokov

Good by–aye!’ she chanted, my American sweet immortal dead love; for she is dead and immortal if you are reading this. — Vladimir Nabokov

I’m walking out now into the soft light, the cooling him of evening, and I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and still many more, so very many tomorrows. — Vladimir Nabokov

I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand. — Vladimir Nabokov

I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. — Vladimir Nabokov

A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

I had possessed her–and she never knew it. — Vladimir Nabokov

I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! — Vladimir Nabokov

There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. — Vladimir Nabokov

Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. — Vladimir Nabokov

Let all of life be an unfettered howl. — Vladimir Nabokov

And yet I adore him. I think he’s quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible–and there is absolutely nobody like him. — Vladimir Nabokov

Life is a message scribbled in the dark. — Vladimir Nabokov

I lied as a nightingale sings, ecstatically, self–obliviously; reveling in the new life–harmony which I was creating. — Vladimir Nabokov

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. — Vladimir Nabokov

What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness––that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidst the night of non–being. — Vladimir Nabokov

If there is anything of which I am certain in life it is that I shall never exchange the liberty of my exile for the vile parody of home. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

All my life I have been a poor go–to–sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. — Vladimir Nabokov

Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. — Vladimir Nabokov

Memory can restore to life everything except smells, although nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. — Vladimir Nabokov

In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much. — Vladimir Nabokov

In my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life. — Vladimir Nabokov

Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity. — Vladimir Nabokov

Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. — Vladimir Nabokov

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much. — Vladimir Nabokov

Although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man’s life, detail is always welcome. — Vladimir Nabokov

The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates. — Vladimir Nabokov

There is an old American saying ‘He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone. — Vladimir Nabokov

If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece. Line — Vladimir Nabokov

For we die every day; oblivion thrives Not on dry thighbones but on blood–ripe lives, And our best yesterdays are now foul piles Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files. — Vladimir Nabokov

Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. — Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. — Vladimir Nabokov

I love you, my sun, my life, I love your eyes–closed–all the little tails of your thoughts, your stretchy vowels, your whole soul from head to heels. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

Play! Invent the world! Invent reality! — Vladimir Nabokov

Why not leave their private sorrows to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess? — Vladimir Nabokov

When you laugh, I want to transform the entire world so it will mirror you. — Vladimir Nabokov

Today our unsophisticated cameras record in their own way our hastily assembled and painted world. — Vladimir Nabokov

What he had really wanted to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape. — Vladimir Nabokov

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. — Vladimir Nabokov

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity. — Vladimir Nabokov

We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world! — Vladimir Nabokov

I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny. — Vladimir Nabokov

The lovely thing about humanity is that at times one may be unaware of doing right, but one is always aware of doing wrong. — Vladimir Nabokov

I clearly understand, first, that the real human being is a poet and, second, that [the tyrant] is the incarnate negation of a poet. — Vladimir Nabokov

Speak, Memory is strictly autobiographic. There is nothing autobiographic in Lolita. — Vladimir Nabokov

You lose your immortality when you lose your memory. — Vladimir Nabokov

Memory overshadows the present and dims the future ‘into something thicker than its usual pea soup. — Vladimir Nabokov

It is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age–strange, strange are the mishaps of memory. — Vladimir Nabokov

Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo–studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue. — Vladimir Nabokov

I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past. — Vladimir Nabokov

Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. — Vladimir Nabokov