Quote

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

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
Past
Placed
Character
Noticed
Would
Artificial
Abruptly
World
Novels
Treasured
Characters
Item
Novel
Bestowed
Often
Pine
Away
Items

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Caress the detail, the divine detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac) and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as nymphets.
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
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
Image
And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me-my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing-yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy-yes, happy!
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
All great novels are great fairy tales.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
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