FastSaying

Coordinating there
Events and objects with remote events
And vanished objects. Making ornaments
Of accidents and possibilities.


Vladimir Nabokov

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The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of a...
THOMAS JEFFERSON I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES My desire is to bring astronomical events and objects down into your personal, lived-in space.
JAMES TURRELL He bumped into a pay phone and said, 'Excuse me, miss,' on our way in," said Julian.

"It'...
CASSANDRA CLARE WHEN THE TIME CAME FOR ME TO WORK
WITH LARGER SPACES, I CONCEIVED THEM
AS GARDENS, NOT AS SI...
ISAMU NOGUCHI The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances."...
ARISTOTLE What can it be about low temperatures
that sharpens the edges of objects?
IAN MCEWAN Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honest...
SYLVIA PLATH Claims for the
occurrence of miraculous events will have to be evaluated on
a case-by-case...
JOHN C. POLKINGHORNE Love Song

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul?...
RAINER MARIA RILKE It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that led to great events.
PATRICIA MOYES Wisdom and spirit of the Universe!
Thou soul is the eternity of thought!
That giv'st to form...
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his ey...
RAINER MARIA RILKE How do the day’s event(s) compare with the famous quote you’ve picked to write about in So This ...
SAMUEL B. JONATHAN No other photographer had such immediate and intimate access to Nabokov over so many years, ... Vlad...
BRIAN BOYD An Unapproachable person may be exhibiting behaviors which are . . .


• Tense and ...
SUSAN C. YOUNG Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but...
SAMUEL BECKETT 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
THOMAS CAMPBELL Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects i...
GEORGE SANTAYANA Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects i...
GEORGE SANTAYANA It's all a series of serendipities
with no beginnings and no ends.
Such infinitesimal po...
ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived...
SAMUEL BECKETT Eyes can only capture objects that already seen in mind.
And mind can only see things that alre...
TOBA BETA Sonnet XXV

Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the stre...
PABLO NERUDA Modeling is one of the few professions where women out-earn men, and that's because we're mo...
CAMERON RUSSELL Pay phones,
relics of an almost-vanished landscape,
always a touch of seediness and sadne...
BRIAN D'AMBROSIO Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found....
ALEXANDER POPE This accidental
meeting of possibilities
calls itself I.

I ask: what am I doing...
DAG HAMMARSKJöLD The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and...
WILLIAM BLAKE The atoms of our body, as well, flow in and away from us. We, like waves and like all objects, are a...
CARLO ROVELLI Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pa...
WALT WHITMAN Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn,
And lust of fame was but a dream...
EMILY BRONTë Possibilities

...in the closet
...itching
...to break out
...but afraid of...
ELLEN HOPKINS We were told that if we didn't [contribute], they were going to have to do without the bleachers and...
CAROL PAGE Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling MARY OLIVER Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants a...
E.E. CUMMINGS Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or event...
J.G. BALLARD This, then, is my choice:

I can allow the events of my life to happen to me.

O...
CHARLES YU ..Breaking yet budding,
dying yet living - standing
amongst ruins and rage,
reaching ...
MERAAQI Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects.
ALBERT EINSTEIN Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects.
DAVE BARRY Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
...
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;<...
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE It was a black and white day of frost, which crawled along the dark trees and outlined twig and bran...
ROBERT S. HICHENS The Master's Sacred Knowledge.

Love is the treasure you should seek!

The grea...
ALLAN RUFUS In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less,
And the good or bad I say ...
WALT WHITMAN Not only does this attract a number of competitors and spectators to our state, but it allows Utahns...
CAROL PAGE End of the Summer

It was end of the summer
And my heart was broken
but i was sm...
ARZUM UZUN They're both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless�...
WALT WHITMAN I'm making a list
I'm making a list of things I must say
For politeness,
And goodness...
SHEL SILVERSTEIN Tea should be as bitter as wormwod and as sharp as a two eged sword
Kit Snicket (a series of un...
LEMONY SNICKET How they are all about, these gentlemen
In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,
Like ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE occasionally we can pause and take a breath
this is especially a great time to re-center or foc...
LEVI PAUL TAYLOR Colored lights blink on and off, racing across the green boughs. Their reflections dance across exqu...
VERA NAZARIAN It will happen but it will take time.
JOHN BOWLBY There is absolutely no connection between the accidents. They are all completely different events, w...
MIKE BAIR Ludwik Szatera was a passionate lover of nostalgia. He could never come to terms with the eternal pa...
STEFAN GRABIńSKI The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always...
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI Seven Steps to Success
1) Make a commitment to grow daily.
2) Value the process more than ...
JOHN C. MAXWELL An atheist believes that a hospital
should be built instead of a church.
An atheist beli...
MADALYN MURRAY O'HAIR Vladimir: Did I ever leave you?
Estragon: You let me go.
SAMUEL BECKETT ...gripping the
rim of the sink
you claw your
way to stand
and cling there, ...
BARBARA BLATNER Am I making something worth while?
I’m not sure.
I write and I sing and I hear words fro...
CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON The Word

Wonder or dream from distant land
I carried to my country's strand
STEFAN GEORGE Rainbows introduce us to reflections
of different beautiful possibilities
so we never forg...
ABERJHANI i am soft again.
there is water and it surrounds me.
there is feeling and i can feel it. AVA. i am soft again.
there is water and it surrounds me.
there is feeling and i can feel it. AVA Walking on a path of uncertainties,
Shuffling on the probabilities of uncertainties,
Wag...
PUSHPA RANA Ash, ash —-
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A ca...
SYLVIA PLATH I'm looking forward to playing with those guys, ... Carlos
Boozer, Andrei Kirilenko are definit...
DERON WILLIAMS Where are You Now? I was there whilst you cried,

I was there to comfort you with smile, LUISA NATASHA PARKER MUSIC OF THE UNIVERSE

Without the orchestra of the universe,
There would be no ether...
SUZY KASSEM My memory is strange that way. I often remember people I've never met and events and places I've nev...
SHERMAN ALEXIE but nothing I ever gave was good for you;
it was like white bread to goldfish.
they cram a...
MARGARET ATWOOD I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN I mean, have you ever imagined

the ocean is alive, and needs to tell us something importa...
JEFFREY MCDANIEL I mean, have you ever imagined

the ocean is alive, and needs to tell us something importa...
JEFFREY MCDANIEL The heart itself is only a small vessel,
yet dragons are there, and lions,
there are poisonou...
MAKARIOS THE GREAT May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are me...
TERESA OF ÁVILA But I had my wand hidden up my sleeve," he assured Padma Patil,... [Ron revising the story in the 2n...
J.K. ROWLING What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Nam...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I don't know many rules to live by,' he'd said. 'But here's one. It's simple. Don't put anything unn...
LAINI TAYLOR I have drunk the night
and swallowed the stars.
I am dancing with abandon
and sing...
KAMAND KOJOURI Because you believed
In yourself
Your tiny self

Because you knew
There is...
GABRIELLE PRENDERGAST As I recall, I was still dressed when I fell asleep."

"Just making sure you were comforta...
KELLEY ARMSTRONG My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back, I see a pattern.
BENOîT B. MANDELBROT Well I was out in my four door
With the top down.
And I looked up and there they were:
M...
LAURIE ANDERSON The Bear and the Maiden Fair


A bear there was, a bear, a bear!
All black and b...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of ...
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI I hold it true that thoughts are things
Endowed with bodies, breath, and wings,
And that w...
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX I am filled time and again
with a heart-aching wonder
when I think

of the fire...
SANOBER KHAN Life is hope.
Hope is faith.
Faith is believe.
Believe is possibilities.
Possibi...
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA GM is proud to support Cure Autism Now's innovative research programs
and partner with an organ...
MARK LANEVE What to Accept


The fact of mountains. The actuality
Of any stone — by kickin...
THOMAS M. DISCH I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay ...
W.B. YEATS

More Vladimir Nabokov

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VLADIMIR NABOKOV Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Rereading this novel today, replaying the moves of its plot, I feel rather like Anderssen fondly rec...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze o...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was you...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers,...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and ge...
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 Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Queer, how I misinterpreted the designations of doom.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I should allow only my heart to have imagination; and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn s...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, f...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The tiny madman in his padded cell.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Treading the soil of the moon, palpitating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event,...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. -...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Solitude is the playfield of Satan. - Pale Fire, 1962.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to en...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the read...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For m...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the h...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss som...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Caress the detail, the divine detail.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack o...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, thought not necessarily rare, t...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme met...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before bein...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in in...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of he...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you've done to me.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the st...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV There was no Lo to behold.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Har...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. Sh...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, though not necessarily rare, tr...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily ap...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The distinct feature of everything extant is its monotony.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Words without experience are meaningless.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Between the ages of ten and fifteen in St. Petersburg, I must have read more fiction and poetry—En...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lolita
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that liter...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their l...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exa...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV And the rest is rust and stardust.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Dear Jesus, do something.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imag...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words
VLADIMIR NABOKOV My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the mos...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
My sin, my soul.
Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the to...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Caress the detail, the divine detail
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Genius is an African who dreams up snow
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Other men die; but I Am not another; therefore I'll not die
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the first - a dull man writing broken English, the second - ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV For me, a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic b...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Solitude is the play field of Satan
VLADIMIR NABOKOV [Against whom was it turned? Against whom did he conspire?] Tum-tee-tum. And once more - TUM! ... I ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack o...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in in...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV - A sentyment staje się uciążliwy. W końcu jest coś nazbyt fizycznego w próbie zachowania czą...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, ban...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV She is a great gobbler of books, but reads only trash, memorizing nothing and leaving out the longer...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV You must be careful. There are things that should never be given up. You must persevere.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I would fight of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, hap...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness....
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Good by-aye!" she chanted, my American sweet immortal dead love; for she is dead and immortal if you...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in k...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV You have to be an artist and a madman...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. Sh...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of partin...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
VLADIMIR NABOKOV And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poiso...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Ink, a Drug.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything i...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It is late now, I am a bit tired; the sky is irritated by stars. And I love you, I love you, I love ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the sa...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I reviewed in thought the modern era of raps and apparitions, beginning with the knockings of 1848, ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV But even in such works where the author is ideally unobtrusive, he remains diffused through the book...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A wave would arrive, all out of breath, but, as it had nothing to report, it would disperse in apolo...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to s...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I can only explain my behaviour then by the mechanism of that dream vacuum wherein revolves a derang...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV They were contemplating moving into another house or, more exactly, loudly saying to each other, so ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that liter...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV You couldn't get more original than Laura. Laura. Yes, she was an original, all right. One of a kind...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV This irritated or puzzled such students of literature and their professors as were accustomed to ‘...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The color of one's creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in ti...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anythin...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV but that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remain...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a si...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The road now stretched across open country, and it occured to me - not by way of protest, not as a s...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV By God, I could make myself bring her that economically halved grapefruit, that sugarless breakfast.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sen...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bl...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subd...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV My little cup brims with tiddles.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light o...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal v...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading
VLADIMIR NABOKOV From far below mounted the clink and tinkle of distant masonry work, and a sudden train passed betwe...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lolita, luz de mi vida, fuego de mis entrañas. Pecado mío, alma mía. Lo-li-ta: la punta de la len...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon wh...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs throu...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable na...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling
VLADIMIR NABOKOV In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruin...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV I would see her floating away from me, celestial and solitary, in an ethereal chairlift, up and up, ...
VLADIMIR NABOKOV