Vladimir Nabokov: Trending quotes

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Vladimir Nabokov: 386 quotes232 likes

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
by the false azure in the windowpane;”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire (1962)

“Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing… I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

“Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.”

Vladimir Nabokov book The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Source: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

“He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pnin

Source: Pnin

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let's even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.”

Vladimir Nabokov

Source: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

“There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

“My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.”

Vladimir Nabokov

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Variant: Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
Source: Lolita

“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

“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Strong Opinions

"Foreword", p. 3.
Strong Opinions (1973)

“A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Laughter in the Dark

Source: Laughter in the Dark

“For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.”

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

“… in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Invitation to a Beheading

Source: Invitation to a Beheading