Vladimir Nabokov: Trending quotes (page 4)

“I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.”

“the evolution of sense, in a sense, is the evolution of non sense”

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me.”

“Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.”

“I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else.”

“There was no Lo to behold.”

“Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.”

“Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.”

“I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.”

“Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head.”

“You lose your immortality when you lose your memory.”

“Most of the dandelions had changed from suns into moons.”

“Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.”

“Solitude is the playfield of Satan.”

“My little cup brims with tiddles.”

“Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.”

“To begin with, let us take the following motto… Literature is Love. Now we can continue.”

“…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.”

“Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.”