Quote

Look at this tangle of thorns.

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
Tangle
Thorns
Look
Looks

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
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 know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The tiny madman in his padded cell.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My characters are galley slaves.
Vladimir Nabokov