Quote

If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.

Vladimir Nabokov

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Human
Masterpiece
Humans
Obscure
Life
Observation
Vast
Succinct
Series
Footnotes
Poet
Unfinished
Understand
Correctly
Sense
Suggests

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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!
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that offensive is frequently but a synonym for unusual and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
Image
My little cup brims with tiddles.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.
Vladimir Nabokov