His brown eyes would roam around the various sentimental and artistic bric-a-brac present, and his own banal toiles (the conventionally primitive eyes, sliced guitars, blue nipples and geometrical designs of the day), and with a vague gesture toward a painted wooden bowl or veined vase, he would say "Prenez donc une des ces poires. La bonne dame d'en face m'en offre plus que je n'en peux savourer." Or: "Mississe Taille Lore vient de me donner ces dahlias, belles fleurs que j'exècre.
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 Il est également vrai qu'un échange est une transaction dans laquelle les deux contractants gagnen... ANTOINE DESTUTT DE TRACY Comment pouvaient-ils accepter que l'histoire de leur vie s'efface sous le souffle d'une bombe? Alor... JEAN BARBE Je savais qu'un afflux inespéré d'énergie l'avait levé de son lit, lui avait donné la force de ... MURIEL BARBERY Dans les jours d'après nous distribuerons tes soixante-dix-sept peluches, une par une ou deux par d... SOPHIE DAULL Jeannot la bêtise des amoureux est immense, végétale, animale, astrale. Que faire? Comment te fai... JEAN COCTEAU La civilisation occidentale s'est entièrement tournée, depuis deux ou trois siècles, vers la mise... CLAUDE LéVI-STRAUSS Vous pensiez que l'innocence suffirait à vous délivrer des filets d'un système juridique dont nou... PAULO COELHO [...] Sans entrer encore dans la question de la « composition du continu », on voit donc que le no... RENé GUéNON - Toi et ta grande cause... (Ignorant le troubadour, le sorceleur avança en titubant.) Ta grande ca... ANDRZEJ SAPKOWSKI - Toi et ta grande cause... (Ignorant le troubadour, le sorceleur avança en titubant.) Ta grande ca... ANDRZEJ SAPKOWSKI Puis il réfléchit: la réalité ne coïncide habituellement pas avec les prévisions; avec une log... JORGE LUIS BORGES Je suis sans pitié ! Je suis sans pitié ! Plus les vers se tordent, plus grande est mon envie de l... EMILY BRONTë Caustique ? Vous voulez dire : méchant ? Oui, je suis un peu méchant, dit Settembrini. Mon regret ... THOMAS MANN En effet: je mourais déjà. Je venais d'apprendre cette nouvelle horrible que tout humain apprend u... AMéLIE NOTHOMB Quand je vous ai dit que vous aviez une prédisposition surnaturelle aux catastrophes, ce n'était p... CHRISTELLE DABOS L'objectivité, vécue dans ce rêve et dans ces visions, relève de l'individuation accomplie. Elle... C.G. JUNG D’où viennent ces influences mystérieuses qui changent en découragement notre bonheur et notre ... GUY DE MAUPASSANT Bien plus que le bruit des bottes, je crains le silence des pantoufles. THIERRY VAN HUMBEEK Vous avez déjà perdu quelqu'un de proche? [...] Vous n'avez jamais l'impression que ces êtres-là... LAURENT GAUDé – Bah alors, c’est ce que je dis, avec la dotation qu’on a, ajouta Făneață puis il se leva... CăLIN TORSAN C’est ainsi que, par exemple, l’idée de l’Infini, qui est en réalité la plus positive de to... RENé GUéNON Que je croie; que tu croies; qu'il ou qu'elle croie. What a funny thing to say over and over again: ... JOHN GREEN et de fines rides d'expression lui encadrent la bouche, parenthèses renfermant toute une vie de mot... JODI PICOULT Des jugements, des appréciations de la vie, pour ou contre, ne peuvent, en dernière instance, jama... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE La vie est un voyage solitaire et, être mariée n'y change rien. D'ailleurs je pense que le fait de... AGATHE COLOMBIER HOCHBERG Socrate considérait que c'est un mal qui n'est pas loin de la folie, de s'imaginer que l'on possèd... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE En ce moment, je me sépare tant soit peu de moi-même et vais à la rencontre de la personne qui s'... VIRGINIA WOOLF Tu n'as rien appris, sinon que la solitude n'apprend rien, que l'indifférence n'apprend rien: c'ét... GEORGES PEREC [A propos du faux évolutionnisme] Il s'agit d'une tentative pour supprimer la diversité des cultur... CLAUDE LéVI-STRAUSS Nous sommes tous des naufragés de l'âme vois-tu, la peinture n'est que le reflet de ce chagrin, an... OLIVIER WEBER Quant à moi, maintenant, j'ai fermé mon âme. Je ne dis plus à personne ce que je crois, ce que j... GUY DE MAUPASSANT Le développement des connaissances préhistoriques et archéologiques tend à étaler dans l'espace... CLAUDE LéVI-STRAUSS Je me rappelais que mon père avait coutume de dire que le but de la vie c'est de se préparer à re... WILLIAM FAULKNER - « Ces règles sont un rapport constamment établi. Entre un corps mû et un autre corps mû, c’... MONTESQUIEU Si tu entamais ces friandises ? Ah, les Dragées surprises de Bertie Crochue ! Un jour, quand j’é... J.K. ROWLING Je suis devenu pompier parce que je voulais sauver des gens. Mais j'aurais dû être plus précis. J... JODI PICOULT - « Les lois y [dans une monarchie] tiennent la place de toutes ces vertus, dont on n’a aucun bes... MONTESQUIEU Une condamnation de la vie de la part du vivant n’est finalement que le symptôme d’une espèce ... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Le vin est la gaieté, dit-on ; comment cet océan de vin qui submerge la commune de Bercy n’égay... PAUL FéVAL PèRE Mais, j’aurai beau supplier, j’aurai beau me révolter, il n’y aura plus rien pour moi ; je n... HENRI BARBUSSE L'idée préconçue entrave et endommage la libre et pleine manifestation de la vie psychique, que j... C.G. JUNG La raison nous impose des limites bien trop étroites et nous invite à ne vivre que le connu - enco... C.G. JUNG Moi qui éprouve, comme chacun, le besoin d’être reconnu, je me sens pur en toi et vais à toi. J... ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPéRY Lorsque, bien plus tard, au lycée, M. Laplane nous enseigna que la chouette était l'oiseau de Mine... MARCEL PAGNOL A qui écris-tu? -A toi. En fait, je ne t'écris pas vraiment, j'écris ce que j'ai envie de fa... ANNA GAVALDA Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of a... MARKUS ZUSAK Le travail ne représentait qu'ennui pour moi, je détestais aller au bureau. Je me sentais vraiment... HARUKI MURAKAMI Ce n’est pas par goût de la souffrance que j’use mes semelles mais parce que la lenteur révèl... SYLVAIN TESSON Je choisis des mots simples et concrets... J'essaie de faire des phrases courtes et j'évite les inv... JACQUES POULIN Je ne connais pas la moitié d'entre vous autant que je le voudrais. Et j'aime moins de la moitié d... J.R.R. TOLKIEN Lorsque la sexualité disparaît, c'est le corps de l'autre qui apparaît, dans sa présence vagueme... MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ We have tears in our eyes As we wave our goodbyes, We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL Les tentatives faites pour connaître la richesse et l'originalité des cultures humaines, et pour l... CLAUDE LéVI-STRAUSS Le mai le joli mai en barque sur le Rhin Des dames regardaient du haut de la montagne Vous... GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE J'ai encore un vif souvenir de Freud me disant : "Mon cher Jung, promettez-moi de ne jamais abandonn... C.G. JUNG On dit père grec, mère suisse-française... On me demande, mais alors, quelle est votre patrie? Je... GEORGES HALDAS Sabes que siempre voy a estar aquí para animarte. Estoy tan orgullosa de ti que quiero que sepas qu... LARA A. SERODIO Soy de donde haya alguien que sonría, que me de la mano, que me bese. Soy de donde son los que resi... BENITO TAIBO To be poor is to suffer. It's the kind of suffering that freezes the heart stone cold. A QUE ô enfance du coeur humain qui ne vieillit jamais! voilà donc à quel degré de puérilité notre s... FRANçOIS-RENé DE CHATEAUBRIAND Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he ... STEPHEN AMBROSE Mes joues creuses et mon regard perçant ne facilitent pas les choses quand il s'agit de franchir un... BJøRN GABRIELSEN Nous savons qu'il advient dans nos vies des choses qui nous semblent totalement inconnues et totalem... C.G. JUNG A gentleman has his eyes on all those present; he is tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the di... LAWRENCE G. LOVASIK You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently. Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m... SARAH J. MAAS What more would you have? He has invented history.
[Fr., Que voulez-vous de plus? Il a invente l... MADAME MARIE ANNE DU DEFFAND J’ai déjà dit que la Communauté juive s’était chargée de recruter les travailleurs pour le ... BERNARD GOLDSTEIN La classe des ouvriers modernes, qui ne vivent qu'à la condition de trouver du travail, et qui n'en... KARL MARX Les personnages de nos autres vies sont des fantômes que la littérature fait revivre. OLIVIER WEBER Oui, je me rappelai. Je connaissais le creux de ce corps protecteur. Je connaissais les batteme... CARINA ROZENFELD Je me rends parfaitement compte du desagreable effet que produit sur la majorite de l'humanité, tou... HIRAM STEVENS MAXIM —Mais, quelle que soit l'importance de l'événement, dès qu'il est écrit sur le papier, il ne f... YōKO OGAWA No me había dado cuenta de la vida tan insatisfecha que tenía hasta que tuve más. Hasta que tuve ... JACKSON PEARCE Si je dois mourir dans cette belle vie, je veux que ça soit fait par tes belles mains. ROMAN PAYNE — Ce n'est pas en Egypte que je vais, répondit le Martinet. Je vais à la maison de la Mort. La M... OSCAR WILDE Les hommes extrêmement heureux, et les hommes extrêmement malheureux a , sont également portés �... MONTESQUIEU Absoballylutely top hole, wot. A and B the C of D I'd say. . . Above and Beyond the Call of Duty. BRIAN JACQUES Ce qui m'intéresse, c'est de savoir qui paie les Rédempteurs, pas de me débarrasser d'une poigné... GABRIEL KATZ le moi est avant tout une instance de maitrise. C est un système de défense au service du principe... CATHERINE MILLOT When a lot of voices, make up a noise, the man who is silent represents a voice. APURVA GAGLANI Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. Yo no soy tan fuerte. A mi me importa que me entiendan. Hay personas a quienes quiero comprender y q... HARUKI MURAKAMI It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold,
than of the office which one fills.
... FRANCOIS DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD He impressed Vladimir with his knowledge and standing and I think he would put far younger men to sh... PHIL ANDERTON I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had
time to make it shorter.
[Fr., Je... BLAISE PASCAL Es la posibilidad lo que me mantiene con esperanza, no la garantía; es como una apuesta que me hago... NICHOLAS SPARKS Estoy en este estacionamiento pensando que nunca he estado tan lejos de casa, y aquí esta la chica ... JOHN GREEN Le parti national-socialiste avait fait un fameux cadeau à ces SS-là : ils pouvaient marcher au co... THOMAS KENEALLY Et ces deux âmes, sœurs tragiques, s'envolèrent ensemble, l'ombre de l'une mêlée à la lumière... VICTOR HUGO 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 Comment des sociétés contemporaines, restées ignorantes de l'électricité et de la machine à va... CLAUDE LéVI-STRAUSS Le savant doit ordonner ; on fait la science avec des faits comme une maison avec des pierres ; m... HENRI POINCARé Du reste, la majorité des orientalistes ne sont et ne veulent être que des érudits ; tant qu’il... RENé GUéNON
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 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