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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

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Famous Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.... My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French. At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts.... In these circumstances nobody should ask me to submit to an interview if by "interview" a chat between two normal human beings is implied.”

PeopleIfsThinkingShouldWritingHumansChildrenLongTwoStoriesAsksSpeakCausesHuman BeingsPartyGeniusCircumstancesNormalAnxietyDistanceSentencesAsk MeInterviewsNativeSubmitTelephonesPatheticDistinguishedGood StoryLong DistanceImpliedSocial AnxietyInsert
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.”

ThinkingReasonDeathNightTermSilentSymbolsParisVisibleAdequateExplosionsCelestialArchesDesolateFirmamentBoulevardAlpine
Book:The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
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“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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“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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“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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“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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