Vladimir Nabokov

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Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)

Russian novelist
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Sourced

  • ...I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.
    • Strong Opinions
  • I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.
    • Strong Opinions
  • What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion? How do God and Devil combine to form a live dog?
    • Despair
  • "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for fancy prose style. 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."
  • "Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!"
    • Lolita
  • "(picnic, lightning)" (Humbert's complete description of the death of his mother)
    • Lolita
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Attributed

  • "My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."
  • "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child."
  • "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." (opening sentence of Speak, Memory)


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On Lolita

  • "As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage."


  • "After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct."


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On the first moon landing

  • "Oh, 'impressed' is not the right word! Treading the soil of the moon gives one, I imagine (or rather my projected self imagines), the most remarkable romantic thrill ever experienced in the history of discovery. Of course, I rented a television set to watch every moment of their marvelous adventure. That gentle little minuet that despite their awkward suits the two men danced with such grace to the tune of lunar gravity was a lovely sight. It was also a moment when a flag means to one more than a flag usually does. I am puzzled and pained by the fact that the English weeklies ignored the absolutely overwhelming excitement of the adventure, the strange sensual exhilaration of palpating those precious pebbles, of seeing our marbled globe in the black sky, of feeling along one's spine the shiver and wonder of it. After all, Englishmen should understand that thrill, they who have been the greatest, the purest explorers. Why then drag in such irrelevant matters as wasted dollars and power politics?"
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On Freud

  • "I think he’s crude, I think he’s medieval, and I don’t want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me. I don’t have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don’t see umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons."
  • "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."
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On the difference between genius and talent

  • "Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The genius of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James."
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Related Quotes

  • It was many and many a year ago,
    In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden lived whom you may know
    By the name of Annabel Lee;—
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
    Than to love and be loved by me.

    I was a child and She was a child,
    In this kingdom by the sea,
    But we loved with a love that was more than love -
    I and my Annabel Lee—
    With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
    Coveted her and me.


  • "I'll example you with thievery.
    The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
    Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
    And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
    The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
    The moon into salt tears: the earth's a thief,
    That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
    From general excrement: each thing's a thief:"


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bg:Владимир Набоков de:Vladimir Nabokov es:Vladimir Nabokov fr:Vladimir Nabokov it:Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov pt:Vladimir Nabokov ru:Набоков, Владимир Владимирович

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