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I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.

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
Deny
Reality
Cannot
Right
Something
Disobey

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You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
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I should allow only my heart to have imagination and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's personal truth.
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The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
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I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
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It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
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I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
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And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me-my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing-yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy-yes, happy!
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Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
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A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
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I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
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Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
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A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle.
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I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with.
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I confess, I do not believe in time.
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do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
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Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.
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Her lips were like large crimson polyps.
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She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
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