Quote

Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.

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
Thing
Gaps
Time
Gray
Rhythm
Beats
Recurrent
Maybe
Interval
Black
Intervals
Sense
Hints
Two
Tender

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Do those clowns really believe what they teach?
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
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
Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods, appear to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
But that mimosa grove-the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since-until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
There was no Lo to behold.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Why do those people guess so much and shave so little, and are so disdainful of hearing aids?
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
Vladimir Nabokov