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Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.

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
Minds
Simple
Nature
Mind
Way
Imitate
Devices
Attractive
Curious

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Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons.
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Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
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Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
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Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.
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I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.
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You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
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Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.
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A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world.
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A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
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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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Mnemosyne, one must admit, has shown herself to be a very careless girl.
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A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.
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We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.
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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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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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His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.
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I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.
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