Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Personality
Dreams
Upon
Dream
Inflicting
Vienna
Umbrella
Elderly
Gentleman
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
In this crazy mirror of terror and art a pseudo-quotation made up of obscure Shakespeareanisms (Chapter Three) somehow produces, despite its lack of literal meaning, the blurred diminutive image of the acrobatic performance that so gloriously supplies the bravura ending for the next chapter.
Vladimir Nabokov
You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
Vladimir Nabokov
Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.
Vladimir Nabokov
The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.
Vladimir Nabokov
Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
Vladimir Nabokov
Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
Vladimir Nabokov
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Vladimir Nabokov
My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
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
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
In reading, one should notice and fondle details.
Vladimir Nabokov
I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.
Vladimir Nabokov
Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.
Vladimir Nabokov
Do not be angry with the rain it simply does not know how to fall upwards.
Vladimir Nabokov
I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.
Vladimir Nabokov
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov
She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.
Vladimir Nabokov
I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.
Vladimir Nabokov
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.
Vladimir Nabokov