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We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.

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
Words
Experience
Also
Live
Without
Things
World
Meaningless
Thoughts

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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And the rest is rust and stardust.
Vladimir Nabokov
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But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov
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To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena - all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
Vladimir Nabokov
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a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My characters are galley slaves.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My God died young. Theolatry i found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God but was I free?
Vladimir Nabokov
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Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.
Vladimir Nabokov
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As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.
Vladimir Nabokov
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All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
Vladimir Nabokov