It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look...), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness.
Vladimir Nabokov
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently. Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m... SARAH J. MAAS The role of the
Christian is to let other people know what Jesus has done, not to
think of themselve... LEWIS N. ROE Naturalistic atheism debunks itself. It
has no power to explain even some
of the most basic principl... LEWIS N. ROE It's important to understand that if
someone calls themselves a Christian, it does not automatically... LEWIS N. ROE The issue isn't whether he loved you, it's how much. Too much. Love can be poison SARAH J. MAAS I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belong to you. SARAH J. MAAS He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain... SARAH J. MAAS Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold ... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Hodor," said Hodor. GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You do what you love, what you need SARAH J. MAAS I turned. Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere... SARAH J. MAAS How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful. EVANS G. VALENS As far back as history records people thinking, thinking people
have been befuddled by the mysteries... LEWIS N. ROE When a lot of voices, make up a noise, the man who is silent represents a voice. APURVA GAGLANI The atheist might have
no proof for the
supernatural, but they
also have no proof
against it. If we ... LEWIS N. ROE She made a fence of phrases, which seemed a treachery to herself. ELIZABETH TAYLOR You are the blood of the dragon. You can make a hat. GEORGE R.R. MARTIN It appeared to Harriet that she was always the one who remembered having seen other people. They nev... ELIZABETH TAYLOR I want to share this bed with you, though," I breathed. "I want you to hold me." Stars flicker... SARAH J. MAAS Daring to dream is not difficult, it's making them come true that is hard... NANETTE L. AVERY Eventually I came across another passage. This is what it said: I am not commanding you, but I ... NICHOLAS SPARKS To kill a mockingbird. If you haven't read it, I think you should because it is very interesting. STEPHEN CHBOSKY I will never forget the vision of Jamie walking towards me. NICHOLAS SPARKS As these images were going through my head, my breathing suddenly went still. I looked at Jamie, the... NICHOLAS SPARKS You don't have to learn much out of books, it's like if you want to learn about cows, you go milk on... HARPER LEE You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them. HARPER LEE History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You must have traveled all night,” she heard herself say. “I had to come back early.” Sh... LISA KLEYPAS A Ritual to Read to Each Other If you don’t know the kind of person I am and... WILLIAM STAFFORD Whether you say that a god does exist, or that none do, it is a claim
to know (or at least believe i... LEWIS N. ROE I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal. I was a survivor, and I was strong. I would no... SARAH J. MAAS I sipped from my wine. "And if he had grabbed me?" There was nothing but uncompromising w... SARAH J. MAAS There you are. I've been looking for you. His first words to me— not a lie at a... SARAH J. MAAS I was not prey any longer, I decided as I eased up to that door. And I was not a mouse. I ... SARAH J. MAAS No one was my master— but I might be master of everything, if I wished. If I dared. SARAH J. MAAS He drained his glass. "I made a mistake." "It's not the end of the world if you do that every n... SARAH J. MAAS I will kill anyone who harms you," Rhys snarled. "I will kill them, and take a damn long time doing ... SARAH J. MAAS Julia poured tea gracefully, but it all ran over into the saucers. ELIZABETH TAYLOR The next day, the villages came closer together until the beginnings and endings could no longer be ... PATRICK W. CARR Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, High Lord?" "Ah. The Suriel to... SARAH J. MAAS Because death is the only thing that could have ever kept him from you. ALLY CARTER The scientific method gives us
information by testing and repeating observable things so that we
can... LEWIS N. ROE I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will... EDWARD R. MURROW Plunging in “truths” about God is like walking on the bottom of a sea that is not there, searchi... MARIANA FULGER That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Kn... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN When I see her,” I said, “it’s like - I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like I never saw... SARAH WATERS Lᴏᴠᴇ ɪs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪɴᴅ ... Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ sᴇᴇ ɪᴛ, ʙᴜᴛ ʏᴏ... NICHOLAS SPARKS She filed the image away as an excellent and insulting question to ask the earl at an utterly inappr... GAIL CARRIGER He wanted to argue like this forever. This was better than nothing. There was no exhausting his ange... DAVID DUCHOVNY Each man lives in his own universe and when he dies the world is over BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA One of the most important things I have found is that no one
school of thought has all of the answer... LEWIS N. ROE The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of and that had come down to her had set a tra... SHERWOOD ANDERSON Having been shown the possibility that God exists, the atheist has
chosen not to accept it. They hav... LEWIS N. ROE The claim to know that no god exists is just irrational. The non-existence of any god has no evidenc... LEWIS N. ROE Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complime... STEPHEN FRY To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys." Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To... SARAH J. MAAS Males are horrible creatures, aren’t they? SARAH J. MAAS When you spend so long trapped in darkness, you find that the darkness begins to stare back. SARAH J. MAAS Many atrocities, have been done in the name of the greater good. SARAH J. MAAS Aemon’s blind white eyes came open. “Egg?” he said, as the rain streamed down his cheeks. “E... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN But I forgot to tell him,” I said quietly, opening the door, “that the villain is usually the pe... SARAH J. MAAS When people begin to define the things that they believe in, based upon the exclusion of all the thi... C. JOYBELL C. In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruin... VLADIMIR NABOKOV She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom…It... ZORA NEALE HURSTON They taught me different was wrong. ANI DIFRANCO Well, well, well I am trap in well, half way to hell. DEYTH BANGER Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls i... JOSEPH CONRAD My father who was there in the house, he wasn't at all a role model. And my mother, who was tryi... TYLER PERRY I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib... C. JOYBELL C. She didn’t know how long they stood on that roof, tangled up in each other, mouths and hands rovin... SARAH J. MAAS We stared at each other for several moments, neither of us speaking or moving, and then I was in fro... JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT I smiled and looked at her- there she was with such a genuine grin and twinkle in her eyes. I kissed... JORI NUNES My first female lover was a Jewish woman. She was butch, but not in a swaggering macho way- she coul... LAWRENCE SCHIMEL Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm as still wa... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You know nothing, Jon Snow. GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Training is an active, dynamic process lived out daily in all areas of life- not a rote exercise in ... CRAIG GROESCHEL Deepest place in my mind is my thinking and thoughts....Do not try to understand me... Otherwis... MARYUM AHSAM She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmu... J. SHERIDAN LE FANU I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from... SARAH DESSEN Tibby sat on the outside of a group of kids in the film program. There was a lot of dark clothing an... ANN BRASHARES My research helped me understand she was a human being with all the problems and foibles the rest of... GRIF STOCKLEY Kehidupan perempuan itu sembilan bagian kacau dan satu bagian ajaib, kau akan segera mengetahuinya..... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Jaime smiled knowingly. Men will read all sorts of things into a knowing smile if you let them. GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Women are designed to help men and men are designed to love and honor them SOTONYE ANGA Her eyes widen and she shoves me back and then there's a space between us, enough to paralyze me wit... COURTNEY SUMMERS I think the purest of souls, those with the most fragile of hearts, must be meant for a short life. ... EMM COLE Yes, their reasons are overwhelming. They are as big as hope and as deep as revolt. They are the rea... ALBERT CAMUS …A city deprived of everything, devoid of light and devoid of heat, starved, and still not crushed... ALBERT CAMUS Words always take on the color of the deeds or sacrifices they evoke. ALBERT CAMUS Peace does not walk up to our doorsteps and press the calling bell! We have to go out there and sear... AVIJEET DAS Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ... E.J. PATTEN If God give you strength and courage, don't use it to intimidate people or overpower them, rather us... ANTHONY LICCIONE Almondine Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her. ... DAVID WROBLEWSKI There are different kinds of darkness,” Rhys said. I kept my eyes shut. “There is the darkness t... SARAH J. MAAS Come on, Feyre. We don’t bite. Unless you ask us to. SARAH J. MAAS My mate. Death incarnate. Night triumphant. SARAH J. MAAS If you were going to die, I was going to die with you. I couldn’t stop thinking it over and over a... SARAH J. MAAS We need hope, or else we cannot endure. SARAH J. MAAS
More Vladimir Nabokov
And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especiall... 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 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 I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with ... VLADIMIR NABOKOV