Quote

Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.

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
Used
Torture
Moronic
Reason
Dues
Debasing
Find
Mental
Heaviest
World
Genius
Nightly
Simply
Rituals
Humanity
Fraternity
Sleep
Betrayal
Cannot
Ritual
Crudest

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Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
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And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.
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Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?
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The compensation for a death sentence is the knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.
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To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.
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I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.
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Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
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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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The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.
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Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
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Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers and reason corrects the feverish beat.
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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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There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called powerful novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
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Ada girl, adored girl, [...] I'm a radiant void. I'm convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended.
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I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.
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I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
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It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
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