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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In reading, one should notice and fondle details.
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Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
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It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
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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.
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The square root of I is I.
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Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.
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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
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We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
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Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac) and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as nymphets.
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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 .
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Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.
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To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena - all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.
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We think not in words but in shadows of words.
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A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
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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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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.
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And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me-my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing-yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy-yes, happy!
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Solitude was corrupting me.
Vladimir Nabokov