Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
Vladimir Nabokov
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Good
Major
Active
Reader
Creative
Read
Cannot
Reread
Book
Curiously
Enough
Majors
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.
Vladimir Nabokov
Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
Vladimir Nabokov
Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.
Vladimir Nabokov
Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.
Vladimir Nabokov
As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.
Vladimir Nabokov
I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.
Vladimir Nabokov
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
Vladimir Nabokov
Dear Jesus, do something.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.
Vladimir Nabokov
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
Vladimir Nabokov
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
Vladimir Nabokov
I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.
Vladimir Nabokov
Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .
Vladimir Nabokov
do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
Vladimir Nabokov
I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.
Vladimir Nabokov
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
Vladimir Nabokov
It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
Vladimir Nabokov
Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.
Vladimir Nabokov
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Vladimir Nabokov
