Quote

I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.

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
Call
Firsts
First
Always
Carroll
Lewis

More quotes by 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
There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The lost glove is happy.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
Image
Stirless, I stand at the window, and in the black bowl of the sky glows like a golden drop of honey the mellow moon
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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!
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov