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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.

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
Reflect
Thousands
Mirrors
Exist
Phantoms

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.
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Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
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A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
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Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.
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Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created it has its fatal flaw.
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And the rest is rust and stardust.
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I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
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My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
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Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.
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...for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.
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To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue.
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Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
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Do those clowns really believe what they teach?
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If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.
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Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.
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A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
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The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
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She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.
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Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
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