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2746484
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While dragging herself up she had to hang onto the rail. Her twisted progress was that of a cripple. Once on the open deck she felt the solid impact of the black night, and the mobility of the accidental home she was about to leave. Although Lucette had never died before--no, dived before, Violet--from such a height, in such a disorder of shadows and snaking reflections, she went with hardly a splash through the wave that humped to welcome..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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3223b2d
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We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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3a553f5
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The act of vividly recalling a patch of the past is something that I seem to have been performing with the utmost zest all my life, and I have reason to believe that this almost pathological keenness of the retrospective faculty is a hereditary trait.
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retrospect
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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4a6acdd
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Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
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possibility
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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96f9338
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When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some impeccably narrowing corridor.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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25ff590
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Dear dad, in consequence of a trivial altercation with a Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, whom I happened to step upon in the corridor of a train, I had a pistol duel this morning in the woods near Kalugano and am now no more. Though the manner of my end can be regarded as a kind of easy suicide, the encounter and the ineffable Captain are in no way connected with the Sorrows of Young Veen. In 1884, during my first summer in Ardis, I s..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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1bccbe7
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All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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62c34ce
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and finally there was the sleepless night when i decided to explore and fight the foul, the inadmissible abyss, devoting all my twisted life to this one task. today i'm sixty-one. waxwings are berry-pecking. a cicada sings.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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03bfcc5
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IN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: WHAT SCENES ONE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE FILMED Shakespeare in the part of the King's Ghost. The beheading of Louis the Sixteenth, the drums drowning his speech on the scaffold. Herman Melville at breakfast, feeling a sardine to his cat. Poe's wedding. Lewis Carroll's picnics. The Russians leaving Alaska, delighted with the deal. Shot of a seal applauding.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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b9e495f
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I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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d0a688d
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And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.
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death
hauntingly-beautiful
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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7002c29
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All three of them stood for a moment gazing at the stars. ''And all these are worlds,'' said Hagen. ''Or else,'' said Clements with a yawn, ''a frightful mess. I suspect it is really a fluorescent corpse, and we are inside it.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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d4d8d9b
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When I hear a critic speaking of an author's sincerity I know that either the critic or the author is a fool
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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c7e90fb
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leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is: a distant lone tree against golden heavens; ripples of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a thing impossible to capture.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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db51bbc
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Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being -- not a constant state -- that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden.
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secret
souls
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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dffc568
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This, to use an American term in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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c6c304d
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As far back as I can remember myself--and I remember myself with lawless lucidity, I have been my own accomplice, who knows too much, and therefore is dangerous.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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8e0fc3c
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beyond the tilled plain, beyond the toy roofs, there would be a low suffusion of inutile loveliness, a low sun in a platinum haze with a warm, peeled-peach tinge pervading the upper edge of a two-dimensional, dove-grey cloud fusing with the distant amorous mist. there might be a line of spaced trees silhouetted against the horizon, and hot still noons above a wilderness of clover, and claude lorrain clouds inscribed remotely into misty azur..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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0119d93
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All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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ce06af4
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Thus it transpired that even Berlin could be mysterious. Within the linden's bloom the streetlight winks. A dark and honeyed hush envelops us. Across the curb one's passing shadow slinks: across a stump a sable ripples thus. The night sky melts to peach beyond that gate. There water gleams, there Venice vaguely shows. Look at that street--it runs to China straight, and yonder star above the Volga glows! Oh, swear to me to put in dreams your..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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ec30d6b
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For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Span..
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lollipop
lolita
pronunciation
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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20c1bd4
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She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide f..
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innocence
insanity
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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26ed5f5
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It is easy for him and me to decipher now a past destiny; but a destiny in the making is, believe me, not one of those honest mystery stories where all you have to do is keep an eye on the clues.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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f823471
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Certainly it's all in bloom, certainly we'll go. For aren't you and I gods? . . . I sense in my blood the rotation of unexplorable universes. . . .
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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b477285
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And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me--my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing--yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy--yes, happy!
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self-centeredness
lonliness
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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d059756
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But then I have long since grown accustomed to the thought that what we call dreams is semi-reality, the promise of reality, a foreglimpse and a whiff of it; that is they contain, in a very vague, diluted state, more genuine reality than our vaunted waking life which, in its turn, is semi-sleep, an evil drowsiness into which penetrate in grotesque disguise the sounds and sights of the real world, flowing beyond the periphery of the mind--as..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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668cdb4
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There is titillating pleasure in looking back at the past and asking oneself, 'What would have happened if...' and substituting one chance occurrence for another, , observing how, from a gray, barren, humdrum moment in one's life, there grows forth a marvelous rosy even that in reality had failed to flower. A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life: one senses in every past instant a parting of ways, a 'thus' and an 'otherwise', ..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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f0d5eb7
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One evening at a remote provincial college through which I happened to be jogging on a protracted lecture tour, I suggested a little quiz---ten definitions of a reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader. I have mislaid the list, but as far as I remember the definitions went something like this. Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good read..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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0d8542b
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And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this: "O rainbow-colored gods. . ."
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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9d97e4c
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Death often is the point of life's joke.
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life
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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28e21a4
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Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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e1cad96
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And I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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f67e5d1
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One last word," I said in my horrible English, "are you quite, quite sure that--well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow , but--well--some day, any day, you will not come live with me? I will create a new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope." "No," she said smiling, "no." "It would have made all the difference," said Humbert Humbert."
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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80d7e6e
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Speaking of novels,' I said, 'you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust's rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more, impossibly rude hostesses, please let me speak, and even ruder guests, mechanical Dostoevskian rows an..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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026ff73
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There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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aac7d61
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He groped for his loafers and walked aimlessly for some time among the trees of the coppice where thrushes were singing so richly, with such sonorous force, such fluty fioriture that one could not endure the agony of consciousness, the filth of life, the loss, the loss, the loss.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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f71a6fd
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V.V. sought to express something, which expressed had only a twilight being (or even none at all--nothing but the illusion of the backward shadow of its imminent expression). It was Ada's castle of cards. It was the standing of a metaphor on its head not for the sake of the trick's difficulty, but in order to perceive an ascending waterful or a sunrise in reverse: a triumph, in a sense, over the ardis of time.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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e57ffe2
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I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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9c18e46
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No man can bring about the perfect murder; chance, however, can do it.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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7ef24e8
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Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point in space, the poet sees everything that happens in one point in time. Lost in thought, he taps his knee with his wandlike pencil, and at the same instant a car (New York license plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screen door of a neighbouring porch, an old man yawns in a misty Turkesta..
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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b917e6b
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All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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7993145
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It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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187b2a7
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I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.
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Vladimir Nabokov |
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caeedc8
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His life was a constant war with insensate objects that fell apart, or attacked him, or refused to function, or viciously got themselves lost as soon as they entered the sphere of his existence.
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funny
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Vladimir Nabokov |