xy

“Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

“Solitude was corrupting me. I needed company and care.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

“The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

“Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

“My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

“for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

“There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.”

Vladimir Nabokov book The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

“His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

“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.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

“… memory can restore to life everything except smells, although nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Mary

“I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

“The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Invitation to a Beheading

“a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

“I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor