Quote

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

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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
Sudden
Landscape
Surprise
Window
Consciousness
Sunlit
Open
Swinging
Night
Marvel
Life
Surprises

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Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
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Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.
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Look at this tangle of thorns.
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My answer to your question'Does the writer have a social responsibility?' is NO.You owe me ten cents, sir.
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Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
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I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
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The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.
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Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
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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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Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
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Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
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Literature was not born the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.
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Her lips were like large crimson polyps.
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Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
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I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.
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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
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If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.
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I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
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I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.
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