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bd4adb3
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Actually she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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e5d5b4a
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If you want to make a movie out of my book, have one of these faces gently melt into my own, while I look.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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c4b876d
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Stilletos of a frozen stillicide [...] In the lovely line heading this comment the reader should note the last word. My dictionary defines it as 'a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop.' I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas Hardy. The bright frost has eternalized the bright eavesdrop.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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4411021
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D]avid began to argue, with the whining intonations of German astonishment, [...] that everyone did it.
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observation
whining
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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22170ad
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I vot, to, chto ia davno podozreval, - bessmyslennost' mira, - stalo mne ochevidno. Ia pochuvstvoval vdrug neveroiatnuiu svobodu, - vot ona-to i byla znakom bessmyslennosti.
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meaning-of-life
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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8466ce3
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The crickets kept crepitating; from time to time there came a sweet whiff of burning juniper; and above the black alpestrine steppe, above the silken sea, the enormous, all-engulfing sky, dove-gray with stars, made one's head spin, and suddenly Martin again experienced a feeling he had known on more than one occasion as a child: an unbearable intensification of all his senses, a magical and demanding impulse, the presence of something for w..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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ebc0040
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But even in such works where the author is ideally unobtrusive, he remains diffused through the book so that his very absence becomes a kind of radiant presence. As the French say, il brille par son absence -- "he shines by his absence." In connection with Bleak House we are concerned with one of those authors who are so to speak not supreme deities, diffuse and aloof, but puttering, amiable, sympathetic demigods, who descend into their boo..
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how-to
literary-criticism
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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d79c963
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Golden haze, puffy bedquilt. Another awakening, but perhaps not yet the final one. This occurs not infrequently: You come to, and see yourself, say, sitting in an elegant second-class compartment with a couple of elegant strangers; actually, though, this is a false awakening, being merely the next layer of your dream, as if you were rising up from stratum to stratum but never reaching the surface, never emerging into reality. Your spellboun..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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e7fe21b
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Time means succession, and succession, change: Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange Schedules of sentiment.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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a06eb1b
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A late arrival had the impression of lots of loud people unnecessarily grouped within a smoke-blue space between two mirrors gorged with reflections. Because, I suppose, Cynthia wished to be the youngest in the room, the women she used to invite, married or single, were, at the best, in their precarious forties; some of them would bring from their homes, in dark taxis, intact vestiges of good looks, which, however, they lost as the party pr..
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drunk
party
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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7c4b08d
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Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one,..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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a6ff3d6
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And a beautiful garden, not far from a beautiful lake, and I said it sounded perfectly perfect.
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humor
language-play
nice-language
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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83f5583
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But nobody yet had been able to dig down to what was most captivating about her: this was the mysterious ability of her soul to apprehend in life only that which had once attracted and tormented her in childhood, the time when the soul's instinct is infallible; to seek out the amusing and the touching: to feel constantly an intolerable, tender pity for the creature whose life is helpless and unhappy; to feel across hundreds of miles that so..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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3c8f5bf
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Why do you think I have ceased caring for you, Lo? -Well, you haven't kissed me yet, have you?
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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9beac43
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A jovo azonban mit sem torodik erzeseinkkel es fantazialasunkkal. A jovo minden pillanatban a szetagazo lehetosegek vegtelenje.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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f0f5bfb
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To the sound of this voice, to the music of the chessboard's evil lure, Luzhin recalled, with the exquisite, moist melancholy peculiar to recollections of love, a thousand games that he had played in the past... There were combinations, pure and harmonious, where thought ascended marble stairs to victory; there were tender stirrings in one corner of the board, and a passionate explosion, and the fanfare of the Queen going to its sacrificial..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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2e03da0
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My patient was one of those singular and unfortunate people who regard their heart ("a hollow, muscular organ," according to the gruesome definition in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, which Pnin's orphaned bag contained) with a queasy dread, a nervous repulsion, a sick hate, as if it were some strong slimy untouchable monster that one had to be parasitized with, alas."
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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12bc506
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Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? "Is that a crime?" I countered, and they all laughed."
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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cf1412b
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There, in front of us, where a broken row of houses stood between us and the harbour, and where the eye encountered all sorts of stratagems, such as pale-blue and pink underwear cakewalking on a clothesline ... it was most satisfying to make out among the jumbled angles of roofs and walls, a splendid ship's funnel, showing from behind the clothesline as something in a scrambled picture - Find What the Sailor Has Hidden - that the finder can..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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e96ecd0
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Some people-and I am one of them-hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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e90c90a
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Let me repeat with quite force: I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow moving tall, with dark soft hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanour.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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db9edb3
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We loved - and it has all gone, somewhere... We loved - and now our love is frozen, and now it lies, one wing spread out, raising its little feet - a dead sparrow on the damp gravel... But we loved... we flew...
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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731574b
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My taut heart lurches heavily, like a sack in a cart, clattering downhill, towards a cliff, towards an abyss! It can't be stopped!
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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1a1808b
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Tu me echabas una mirada con un gris signo de interrogacion en tus ojos. "Oh, no, no empecemos de nuevo" (incredulidad, exasperacion). Pues nunca te dignabas a creer que yo pudiera sentir el deseo -sin intenciones especificas- de hundir mi cara en tu falda tableada, amor mio. La fragilidad de tus brazos desnudos... Como anhelaba envolver esos brazos, y tus cuatro miembros limpidos, encantadores -un potrillo acurrucado-, y tomar tu cabeza en..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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149ebcc
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making klv zdB AoyvBno wkh gwzxm dqg kzwAAqvo a gwttp vq wjfhm Ada in natural bower of aspens xliC mujzikml.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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e0bc072
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There can be no emblem or parable in a village idiot's hallucinations or in last night's dream of any of us in this hall. In those random visions nothing - underline nothing (grating sound of horizontal stroke can be construed as allowing itself to be deciphered y a witch doctor that can then cure a madman or give confort to a killer by laying the blame on a too fond, too fiendish or too indifferent parent - secret festerings that the foste..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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a6699a6
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I notice a whiff of Swift in some of my notes. I too am a desponder in my nature, an uneasy, peevish, and suspicious man, although I have my moments of volatility and fou rire.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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ed032c3
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The bowl that emerged was one of those gifts whose first impact produces in the recipient's mind a colored image, a blazoned blur, reflecting with such emblematic force the sweet nature of the donor that the tangible attributes of the thing are dissolved, as it were, in this pure inner blaze, but suddenly and forever leap into brilliant being when praised by an outsider to whom the true glory of the object is unknown.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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ff3ef70
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Unfortunately his urge to write had suddenly petered out and he did not know what to do with himself. He was not sleepy having slept after dinner. The brandy only added to the nuisance. He was a big heavy man of the hairy sort with a somewhat Beethovenlike face. He had lost his wife in November. He had taught philosophy. He was exceedingly virile. His name was Adam Krug.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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9242036
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Lolita, luce della mia vita, fuoco dei miei lombi. Mio peccato, anima mia. Lo-li-ta: la punta della lingua compie un percorso di tre passi sul palato per battere, al terzo, contro i denti. Lo. Li. Ta.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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6afefed
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and I switched to English literature, where so many frustrated poets end as pipe-smoking teachers in tweeds.
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ironic
true
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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81035a1
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I adore you. I shall never love any- body in my life as I adore you, never and nowhere, neither in eternity, nor in terrenity, neither in Ladore, nor on Terra, where they say our souls go. But! But, my love, my Van, I'm physical, horribly physical
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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5e17a98
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she surrenders her bulk to the wicker armchair, which, out of sheer fright, bursts into a salvo of crackling.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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01beac5
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But how can I begin writing when I do not know whether I shall have time enough, and the torture comes when you say to yourself, 'Yesterday there would have been enough time'--and again you think, 'If only I had begun yesterday ...' And instead of the clear and precise work that is needed, instead of a gradual preparation of the soul for that morning when it will have to get up, when--when you, soul, will be offered the executioner's pail t..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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03e11f6
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He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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c9ff65d
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To her he would surrender the remnants of himself at the first trumpet blast of destiny.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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df21731
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Vai nguoi - va toi la mot trong so ho - ghet nhung cai ket vui. Chung toi thay bi lua. Ton thuong la binh thuong. Nghiep chuong bat kha cuong. Tran tuyet lo dung giua duong chi vai buoc tren ngoi lang co rum da hanh xu khong chi phi luan ma con vo dao.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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ee23835
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I am just winking happy thoughts into a little tiddle cup.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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d0d1bff
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But one shelf was a little neater than the rest and here I noted the following sequence which for a moment seemed to form a vague musical phrase, oddly familiar: Hamlet, La morte d'Arthur, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, South Wind, The Lady with the Dog, Madame Bovary, The Invisible Man, Le Temps Retrouve, Anglo-Persian Dictionary, The Author of Trixie, Alice in Wonderland, Ulysses, About Buying a Horse, King Lear ...
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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d030865
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Knight seemed to him to be constantly playing some game of his own invention, without telling his partners its rules.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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4dce508
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Vsegda udivliaius' tomu, skol'ko sliuny u prostogo naroda.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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769e448
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No free man needs a God; but was I free? How fully I felt nature glued to me And how my childish palate loved the taste Half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste! My picture book was at an early age The painted parchment papering our cage: Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun; Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenon The iridule - when, beautiful and strange, In a bright sky above a mountain range One opal cloudlet in an oval form ..
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nature
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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530783b
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how can I write about this when I am afraid of not having time to finish and of stirring up all these thoughts in vain?
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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114fb90
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It's exactly my sense of existing - a fragment, a wisp of color.
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nabokov
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Vladimir Nabokov |