Vladimir Nabokov quotes - page 10

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so. (Vladimir Nabokov)
A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Do those clowns really believe what they teach? View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Why do those people guess so much and shave so little, and are so disdainful of hearing aids? View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
All the information I have about myself is from forged documents. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
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. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
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. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
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. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . . View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
The tiny madman in his padded cell. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with. (Vladimir Nabokov)
Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
By God, I could make myself bring her that economically halved grapefruit, that sugarless breakfast. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Perhaps if the year was 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
The term "bend sinister" means a heraldic bar or band drawn from the left side (and popularly, but incorrectly, supposed to denote bastardy). This choice of title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life, a sinistral and sinister world. The title's drawback is that a solemn reader looking for "general ideas" or "human interest" (which is much the same thing) in a novel may be led to look for them in this one. (Vladimir Nabokov)
Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac) and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as ''nymphets.'' View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Poor Knight he really had two periods, the first - a dull man writing broken English, the second - a broken man writing dull English. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra... these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known... this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come out of him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. ...I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov