Quote

Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.

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
Littles
Planets
Jagged
Little
Pieces
Deranged
Book
Bits
Painfully
Writing
Knew
Attempting
Even
Brain
Brains
Another
Aware
Become
Planet
Together
Piece

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Literature was not born the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called powerful novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
Image
Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My characters are galley slaves.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? Is that a crime? I countered, and they all laughed.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods, appear to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
We are most artistically caged.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk.
Vladimir Nabokov