Quote

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

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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
Something
Words
Suddenly
Felt
Chaos
Reason
Wings
Longed
Wanted
Sorry
Immensely
Need
Bird
Earthly
Real
Later
Settled
Needs
Head
Birds
Heart
Alone
Shoulders

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Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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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.
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Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.
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Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
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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.
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Do those clowns really believe what they teach?
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The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.
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An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
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Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
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Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist.
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And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.
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do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
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Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
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Although I do not care for the slogan art for art's sake, there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.
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Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons.
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There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
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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.
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Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
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I confess, I do not believe in time.
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