What stopped me was the awful feeling that if I meddled with fate in any way and tried to rationalize her fantastic gift, that gift would be snatched away like that palace on the mountain top in the Oriental tale which vanished whenever a prospective owner asked its custodian how come a strip of sunset sky was clearly visible from afar between black rock and foundation.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

Fragments of these speeches, in which the words ‘translucence’ and ‘opacity’ rose and burst like bubbles, now sounded in Cincinnatus’s ears, and the rush of blood became applause.

— Vladimir Nabokov

But how can I begin writing when I do not know whether I shall have time enough, and the torture comes when you say to yourself, “Yesterday there would have been enough times” – and again you think, “If only I had begun yesterday...

— Vladimir Nabokov

Blunders, gropings, disappointment; surely the Cupid serving him was left-handed, with a weak chin and no imagination. And alongside these feeble romances there had been hundreds of girls of whom he had dreamed but whom he had never got to know; they had just slid past him, leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is: a distant lone tree against golden heavens; ripples of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a thing quite impossible to capture.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Her love was of the lily variety.

— Vladimir Nabokov

The past was safe in its cage. Why not have a look?

— Vladimir Nabokov

He could not even see the bluish glimmer of a window or those faint patches of light which come to stay with the walls at night.

— Vladimir Nabokov

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
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