Quote

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

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
Seemed
Clouded
Evasions
Meaning
Ripple
Maudlin
Lost
Recollection
Inept
Littles
Tangible
Blurred
Little
Consciously
Ripples
Everything
Formed
Isolate
Nothing
Yellow
Yielding
Every
Mysterious
Evasion
Illusive

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
One is always at home in one's past.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.
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
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish.
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
How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!
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
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
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
There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra-these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known . . . this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
Vladimir Nabokov