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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

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Famous Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

“Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed—then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.”

MindHeartMayRealSoulTogetherLiteratureBitsBrainTakenBloodBrokenUnityTongueBe GoodLovelyStomachPalmsFlavorAppreciatedHollowCrushedRelishTrue Worth
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“Have you ever happened, reader, to feel that subtle sorrow of parting with an unloved abode? The heart does not break, as it does in parting with dear objects. The humid gaze does not wander around holding back a tear, as if it wished to carry away in it a trembling reflection of the abandoned spot; but in the best corner of our hearts we feel pity for the things which we did not bring to life with our breath, which we hardly noticed and are now leaving forever. This already dead iventory will not be resurrected in one's memory.”

IfsFeelsHeartDoeMemoriesBreakForeverHappenedObjectsTearsReaderSorrowReflectionBreathsLeavingDearCornersPitySpotsWanderSubtleAbandonedPartingTremblingUnlovedAbodeHolding Back
Book:The Gift
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“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass Hang all the furniture above the grass, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!”

NightFallDarkSkyLandBedShadowGlassesSnowGrassApplesChairsCoveredPlatesDelightfulGlimpseFurnitureLampsCrystalsFlewLawnsDuplicateFluffAzureWindowpaneDark Glasses
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsMeanLittlesLongTogetherDiesOur LivesShareMiddleTongueLovelyLittle ThingsLiliesDoveVelvetLingeringLife Together
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: "honey-colored skin," "thin arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth"); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).”

MindKindLittlesLongTwoBigsEyeFacesTermNaturalMemoriesDarkColorHairArmsMouthsSkinsGhostObjectivesBelovedVisualsBrownHoneyLaboratoryEvokeLashesEyelidsReplicaLong Lashes
Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
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“a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.”

MenWorldWritingSelfWholeMomentsWould BeTogetherLastsWatchesLettersDecidedDestructionDown AndAffairWhole WorldAbsurdDestroyedDustSmokeThat MomentEstatesMundaneSelf DestructionPostmanProgenyWinding Up
Book:THE EYE
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“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.”

IfsKnowsWritingStillsPastMotherThreeMemoriesSunStyleSummerDiedBottomAccidentsGoldenObservationHillsPocketsWarmthFreakLightningInfancyDuskSuspendedPicnicsRemnantsMother DiedFurryDellPhotogenicMidges
Book:Lolita
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“Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

MayLongSoulSpiritualDesireCausesLevelsCasesSadnessParticularSickLongingPainfulNostalgiaBoredomDullGradesSicknessSensationsShadeYearningVagueLowestAnguishAcheRestlessnessMorbidNounsSingle WordEnnuiGreat SpiritualPining
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“She had spent all her life in feeling miserable; this misery was her native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone save her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul. My enormous and morose Mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity.”

SoulEnoughFeelingsEarthMovingImpossibleElementsEternityMiseryDepthEnormousImpressionMiserablePermanentBotherNativeFluctuationMorose
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love - from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter- to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behaviour of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time.”

ThinkingHeartPersonsMatterSeemsFormUniverseSpaceConsciousnessColdHabitMy HeartEternityDrawingInsanityBehaviourTime And SpaceHelplessnessUnimaginablePitfallsNucleusRadiusPersonal MatterRemoteness
Book:Speak, Memory: A Memoir
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“There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.”

YearsReasonWholeHateHouseFeetPoetOfficeYears AgoShootingOddReason WhyThirtyTortureExecutionDictatorProvokingTruckElusiveGloomyClumsyGleamCorridorsProsecutorSquadOrdealsGallantShufflingRuffian
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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