01UndatedListen—I want to run all my life, screaming at the top of my lungs. Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
02UndatedEverything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
03UndatedI see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
04UndatedBut then what does it matter whence comes the gentle nudge that jars the soul into motion and sets it rolling, doomed never again to stop?Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
05UndatedA writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
06UndatedA work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
07UndatedIt's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
08UndatedAt eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
09Undatedas if it were a point of honor—which, indeed, a point of art often is.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
10UndatedI discovered in nature the non utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
11UndatedA 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 / quote ↗
12UndatedI would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
13UndatedShe is a great gobbler of books, but reads only trash, memorizing nothing and leaving out the longer descriptions.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
14UndatedDoom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
15UndatedDevices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
16UndatedNo free man needs a God; but was I free?How fully I felt nature glued to meAnd how my childish palate loved the tasteHalf-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!My picture book was at an early ageThe painted parchment papering our cage:Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun;Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenonThe iridule - when, beautiful and strange,In a bright sky above a mountain rangeOne opal cloudlet in an oval formReflects the rainbow of a thunderstormWhich in a distant valley has been staged -For we are most artistically caged.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
17UndatedTo each, or about each, of his colleagues he had said at one time or other, something... something impossible to recall in this or that case and difficult to define in general terms -- some careless bright and harsh trifle that had grazed a stretch of raw flesh.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
18UndatedMy loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
20UndatedI mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
21UndatedWe loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever openVladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
22UndatedLolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school.She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
23UndatedReality is a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist. And yet another stage of reality is reached with that botanist who is a specialist in lilies. You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable. You can know more and more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing: it’s hopeless. So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects— that machine, there, for instance. It’s a complete ghost to me— I don’t understand a thing about it and, well, it’s a mystery to me, as much of a mystery as it would be to Lord Byron.Vladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
24UndatedThe pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of readingVladimir Nabokov / quote ↗
