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His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.

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
Wings
Failing
Struggle
Fall
Without
Refused

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I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.
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Style and Structure are the essence of a book great ideas are hogwash.
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Imagine me I shall not exist if you do not imagine me try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity let's even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.
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There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
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Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.
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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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I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
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I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais!
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Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.
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if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
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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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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!
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There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.
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And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.
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A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
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Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
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I have never seen a more lucid, more lonely, better balanced mad mind than mine.
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