Quote

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

Vladimir Nabokov

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Vladimir Nabokov
Age: 77 †
Born: 1899
Born: January 1
Died: 1977
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Chess Composer
Chess Player
Journalist
Lepidopterist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
St. Petersburg
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Vladimir Sirin
Vl. Sirin
Wladimir Nabokoff-Sirin
V. Sirin
Scent
Smell
Completely
Nature
Past
Nothing
Revives
Revive
Associated

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My characters are galley slaves.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I think it is all a matter of love.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra-these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known . . . this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Caress the detail, the divine detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov