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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

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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
Produce
Mirrors
Chapter
Acrobatic
Crazy
Despite
Literal
Diminutive
Next
Terror
Chapters
Gloriously
Art
Performances
Produces
Blurred
Three
Somehow
Obscure
Quotation
Made
Lack
Ending
Pseudo
Image
Mirror
Quotations
Meaning
Performance
Supplies

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
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Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
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The tiny madman in his padded cell.
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Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
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Style and Structure are the essence of a book great ideas are hogwash.
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Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
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An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
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in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
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My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.
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My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
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A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
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There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
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I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
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But in my arms she was always Lolita.
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I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.
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Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.
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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
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Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.
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And the rest is rust and stardust.
Vladimir Nabokov