Quote

We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.

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
Intended
Fate
Alienate
Hasten
Fates

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
Vladimir Nabokov