Vladimir Nabokov Quotes - Page 11

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

In reading, one should notice and fondle details.

Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.

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

If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.

When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.

I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.

But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.

All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.

Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.

Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.

It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.

Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.

No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .

The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.

Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.

If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.

a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.

I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.

I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.

I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.

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