Let all of life be an unfettered howl. - Vladimir Nabokov
I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else. - Vladimir Nabokov
Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra... these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known... - Vladimir Nabokov
Great novels are above all great fairy tales . . . literature does not tell the truth but makes it up. - Vladimir Nabokov
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual. - Vladimir Nabokov
No jewels, save my eyes, do I own, but I have a rose which is even softer than my rosy lips. And a quiet youth said: 'There is nothing softer than your heart.' And I lowered my gaze... - Vladimir Nabokov
Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about. - Vladimir Nabokov
He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, thought not necessarily rare, traits, all of which he accepted as absurd clues in a clever puzzle. - Vladimir Nabokov
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist. - Vladimir Nabokov
And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita. - Vladimir Nabokov
Light in comparison with darkness is a void. - Vladimir Nabokov
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible - Vladimir Nabokov
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child. - Vladimir Nabokov
It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow. - Vladimir Nabokov
while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. - Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name. - Vladimir Nabokov
All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter. - Vladimir Nabokov
A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle... - Vladimir Nabokov
A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die. - Vladimir Nabokov
In this very special self-hypnotic state there can be no question of getting out of touch with on[e]self and floating into a normal sleep (unless you are very tired at the start) - Vladimir Nabokov
At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air. - Vladimir Nabokov
Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind? - Vladimir Nabokov
(T)here exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time. - Vladimir Nabokov
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. - Vladimir Nabokov
But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions. - Vladimir Nabokov
...I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no purpose than to get rid of that book.... - Vladimir Nabokov
We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins. - Vladimir Nabokov
Perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled...in a unique and inimitable way. - Vladimir Nabokov
In a sense, we are all crashing to our death from the top story of our birth ... and wondering with an immortal Alice at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles - no matter the imminent peril - these asides of the spirit ... are the highest form of consciousness. - Vladimir Nabokov
Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity. - Vladimir Nabokov
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece. - Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. - Vladimir Nabokov
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. - Vladimir Nabokov
I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading. - Vladimir Nabokov
The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. - Vladimir Nabokov
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth. - Vladimir Nabokov
My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. - Vladimir Nabokov
Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely. - Vladimir Nabokov
Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. - Vladimir Nabokov
The best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style. [Vogue, interview, 1969] - Vladimir Nabokov
The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading - Vladimir Nabokov
I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes - Vladimir Nabokov
The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates. - Vladimir Nabokov
The subject may be crude and repulsive. Its expression is artistically modulated and balanced. This is style. This is art. This is the only thing that really matters in books. - Vladimir Nabokov
I dreamt of you last night - as if I was playing the piano and you were turning the pages for me. - Vladimir Nabokov
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. - Vladimir Nabokov
as if it were a point of honor—which, indeed, a point of art often is. - Vladimir Nabokov