Quote

Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.

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
Away
Hiding
Sometimes
Angels
Mind
Shooting
Smoke
Throw
Archangel
Angel
Cigarettes
Stars
Sleeves
Comes
Cigarette

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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.
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Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
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I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
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While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
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There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
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Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
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Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
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Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
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Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
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I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.
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I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.
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Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!
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The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
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Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be
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His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.
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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.
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Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.
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