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...All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.

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
Cripples
Trumpet
Trumpets
Answer
Answers
Call
Words
Deserters
Best
Remainder

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
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Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
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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.
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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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A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
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The lost glove is happy.
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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
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Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?
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I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.
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The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.
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while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
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It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
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Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.
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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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There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
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Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
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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.
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It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
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... my mind lay limp in an empty world.
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And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.
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