Quote

…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

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
Obviously
Conventionality
Whose
Polished
Words
Deadly
Women
Bridge
May
Reflect
Soul
Club
Book
Bridges
Never
Clubs

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
All religions are based on obsolete terminology.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.
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
I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies - every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
A good laugh is the best pesticide.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My Carmen, I said (I used to call her that sometimes) we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed. ... Because, really, I continued, there is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere, said Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I think it is all a matter of love.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Don't touch me I'll die if you touch me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you love me thus!
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
Image
My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
Vladimir Nabokov