Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

About Vladimir Nabokov:

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist. While Nabokov's first nine novels were in Russian, he later rose to international prominence as a writer of English prose. He also made serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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...

Vladimir Nabokov

This irritated or puzzled such students of literature and their professors as were accustomed to ‘serious’ courses replete with ‘trends ’ and ‘schools ’ and ‘myths ’ and ‘symbols ’ and ‘social comment ’ and something unspeakab...

Vladimir Nabokov

Good by-aye!" she chanted, my American sweet immortal dead love; for she is dead and immortal if you are reading this.

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

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

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 pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

Vladimir Nabokov

(T)here exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time.

Vladimir Nabokov

Genius is finding the invisible link between things.

Vladimir Nabokov

It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed.

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

In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally wins the weak babbling girl, but there is no governmental law in Western countries to ban a story that does not comply with a fond tradition, so that w...

Vladimir Nabokov

Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.

Vladimir Nabokov

Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.

Vladimir Nabokov

Let all of life be an unfettered howl.

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

Great novels are above all great fairy tales . . . literature does not tell the truth but makes it up.

Vladimir Nabokov

I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of her brown hair, done anyhow, or again for that movement of her plump shoulders. But, probably the tru...

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

As Ganin looked up at the skeletal roof in the ethereal sky he realized with merciless clarity that his affair with Mary was ended forever. It had lasted no more than four days—four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he ...

Vladimir Nabokov

Author Bio

  • NameVladimir Nabokov
  • DescriptionRussian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
  • BornApril 22, 1899
  • DiedJuly 2, 1977
  • CountryRussian Empire; United States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist; Linguist; Poet; Writer; Zoologist; Translator; Playwright; Autobiographer; Educationist
  • WorksThe Defense; The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight; Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak, Memory
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship