Quote

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

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
Feels
Behave
Behaves
People
Harm
Jam
Track
Cheated
Feet
Tracks
Happy
Doom
Cowering
Hate
Norm
Unnaturally
Ends
Stopping
Avalanche
Feel
Village
Avalanches

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
Solitude was corrupting me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness -- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.
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
Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
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
Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There is only one school of literature - that of talent.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Her lips were like large crimson polyps.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
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