That Voice in the Mist rang out in the dimmest passage of my mind. It was but the echo of some possible truth, a timely reminder: don’t be too certain of learning the past from the lips of the present. Beware of the most honest broker. Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

Everything, even what was saddest and most shameful in his past life, was overlaid with the deceptive charm of colours. He was horrified to realize how little he had used his eyes – for these colours moved across too vague a background and their outlines were singularly blurred.

— Vladimir Nabokov

The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales... literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.

— Vladimir Nabokov

For me a work of fiction exists only in so far as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art is the norm.

— Vladimir Nabokov

To love with all one’s soul and leave the rest to fate, was the simple rule she heeded.

— Vladimir Nabokov

On second thoughts, I still have it all done by Dr. Mollnar. His price is higher, but he is of course a much better dentist than you.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I am not handsome, I am not interesting, I am not talented. I am not even rich. But, Lise, I offer you everything I have, to the last blood corpuscle, to the last tear, everything. And, believe me, this is more than any genius can offer you because a genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do. I may not achieve happiness, but I know I shall do everything to make you happy.

— Vladimir Nabokov

So I lingered there, pretending, in front of my own self, that I had something to write.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Sundaes cause acne.

— Vladimir Nabokov

It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality. I was all covered with Quilty – with the feel of that tumble before the bleeding. The.

— Vladimir Nabokov

When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the act of attention might lead to our sinking involuntarily into the history of that object.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I felt curiously aloof from my own self.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I have hurt too much too many bodies with my twisted poor hands to be proud of them.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Can’t decide whether dolly has exceptional emotional control or none at all.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Martin was one of those people for whom a good book before sleep is something to look forward to all day. Such a person, upon happening to recall, amidst routine occupations, that on his bedside table a book is waiting for him, in perfect safety, feels a surge of inexpressible happiness.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I noticed, for instance, that dreams under the midnight sun tended to be highly coloured, and this my friend the photographer confirmed.

— Vladimir Nabokov

He would remove his glasses to beam at the past while massaging the lenses of the present.

— Vladimir Nabokov

And I’m happy. I’m happy that Conscience, the pimp of my sleepy reflections and projects, did not get at the critical secret. Today I am really remarkably happy.

— Vladimir Nabokov

But one day while disrupting the strata of sense and descending deep down to my wellspring I saw mirrored, besides my own self and the world, something else, something else, something else.

— Vladimir Nabokov

And the struggle began to seem muddled, unresolvable: I, the black sky, I, the lights, and the present minute – and the present minute went by. But who knows – perhaps, it was priceless.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, 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 foot ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores at the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

— Nabokov Vladimir
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