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Solitude is the playfield of Satan.

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
Solitude
Satan

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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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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.
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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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Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.
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Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
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a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
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If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.
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I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
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We think not in words but in shadows of words.
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And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.
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Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
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Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
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It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
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You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.
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There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness.
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And the rest is rust and stardust.
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I should allow only my heart to have imagination and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's personal truth.
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do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
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if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
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The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
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