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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

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Famous Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

“I could also distinguish the glint of a special puddle (the one Krug had somehow perceived through the layer of his own life), an oblong puddle invariably acquiring the same form after every shower because of the constant spatulate shape of a depression in the ground. Possibly something of the kind may be said to occur in regard to the imprint we leave in the intimate texture of space. Twang. A good night for nothing.”

KindMaySaidFormNightSpaceSpecialShapesDepressionRegardConstantIntimateLayersShowersTextureGood NightPuddles
Book:Bend Sinister
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“Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being - not a constant state - that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden.”

IfsMaySoulStatesAbilityNumbersSecretConstantBurdenChosenUnconsciousHereafter
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“The term "bend sinister" means a heraldic bar or band drawn from the left side (and popularly, but incorrectly, supposed to denote bastardy). This choice of title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life, a sinistral and sinister world. The title's drawback is that a solemn reader looking for "general ideas" or "human interest" (which is much the same thing) in a novel may be led to look for them in this one.”

WorldHumansLooksMayMeanIdeasTurnsChoicesLeftSidesTermInterestNovelTakenBrokenReaderBandMirrorsBarsTitlesSolemnOutlinesDistortionSinisterDrawbacksWrong Turn
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some 'future' events may be linked to others, O.K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.”

IfsMayPersonsDoeHandsCausesDestinyEffectsMissingEventsActivityDirectBreathsAffairCrowdsChainsNecksLinksLinkedScopeSequenceCause And EffectInterferenceFuture Events
Book:Transparent things: a novel
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“I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.”

IfsKnowsMenMayEndsFilmLife IsDiesSpaceWonderfulEgoFleshLandscapeCharacteristicsCommunionTravelerSurroundingsEnvelopesHelmet
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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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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“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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“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.”

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Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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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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“I cannot help feeling there is something essentially wrong about love. Friends may quarrel or drift apart, close relations too, but there is not this pang, this pathos, this fatality which clings to love. Friendship never has that doomed look. Why, what is the matter? I have not stopped loving you, but because I cannot go on kissing your dim dear face, we must part, we must part.”

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Book:The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
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