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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

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Famous Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

“We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.”

ThinkingLongBookCountryMomentsTodayNightSleepJourneyDogLovelyEnormousCollectionsMapsEvery NightRuinedTrailsTireRetrospectDreamySlimeLong Journey
Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
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“All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.”

ShouldChildrenHas BeensSoulMightFoundOpportunityAddPossessionFleshMutualMatesMight Have BeenParticlesFrenzySlumsImbibing
Book:Lolita
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“Perhaps if the year was 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer.”

IfsWayWantYearsMightPastUsedClassMiddleScientistErasGentlePoisonMiddle ClassKillersHollowPalaces
Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
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“The road now stretched across open country, and it occured to me - not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience - that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong site of the road.”

WayWellsCountryFeelingsMightLawHumanityLeftSidesNovelElementsDrivingSymbolsPleasantProtestSiteTrafficHighwaysMeltingDisregardEliminationDisregardedDriving On
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.”

BelieveChildrenStatesHelpingMightWantedI BelieveStarsPoorCarWindHollywoodDollarsMereBarsKitchenFiftyFierceTornBroadwayExesFoulPursesPrairieDinersWind BlowingBarmen
Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
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“but that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since." "this then is my story. i have reread it. it has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. at this or that twist of it i feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than i care to probe.”

FeelsLittlesSelfStoriesCareBeautifulGirlStarsBitsWaterBloodGreenDeeperTongueFlamesHoneyI CareAcheLimbsTwistsDewArdentSlipperyGroveMarrowHazeGlidingMimosas
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.”

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Book:Pale fire
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“No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.”

ShouldWritingI CanCountryEnoughPastYoungMastersJudgmentLowsFairsExpectedAdmireMagazinesSensualBotherProvokingAccuracyEmulateMammalsSensuousFree CountryChuckles
Book:Lolita
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“The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual;" and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.”

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Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
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“There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar 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 (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.”

DoeArtSoulStatesFictionTeachKindnessReaderCuriosityConnectedGentleBlissEcstasyMeaninglessAestheticTendernessNormDidactic
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come out of him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. ... I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”

ThinkingWellsMayArtBlackSecretBoysShareBabyHusbandAngelTreatsSmokeImmortalityGiantsNervesRefugeSonnetPropheticDementedPigment
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“- Might it console you to know that I expect nothing but torture from her return? That I regard you as a bird of paradise? She shook her head. - That my admiration for you is painfully strong? - I want Van – she cried – and not intangible admiration. - Intangible? You goose. You my gauge it, you may brush it once very lightly with the knuckles of you gloved hand. I said knuckles. I said once. That will do. I can't kiss you. Not even your burning face. Good-bye, pet. Tell Edmond to take a nap after he returns. I shall need him at two in the morning.”

KnowsWantNeedsMaySaidI CanTwoHandsMightFacesStrongMorningReturnKissingBirdRegardBurningTortureParadisePetAdmirationCriedBrushesVansByeGeeseNapsGood ByeConsoleIntangibleGaugesKnucklesExpect Nothing
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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