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One is always at home in one's past.

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
Always
Past
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How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!
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The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
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The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
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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.
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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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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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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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I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.
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He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.
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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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When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - hoping that I like the book as much as he does - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.
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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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We think not in words but in shadows of words.
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Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? Is that a crime? I countered, and they all laughed.
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His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.
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My characters are galley slaves.
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Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
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Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.
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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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Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
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