Quotes from Vladimir Nabakov

with somebody's lost pair of sun-glasses for only witness.

Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

As is invariably noted at the beginning of positively all literary biographies, the little boy was a glutton for books.... For his first writing exercise he painstakingly reproduced: "Obey your sovereign, honor him and submit to his laws," and the compressed ball of his index finger thus remained ink-stained forever. Now the thirties are over and the forties have begun.

The world itself is but a series of footnotes to a vast unfinished masterpiece.

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.

[T]he cherub, alas, proved to be pasted on tough gingerbread which was too hard for many to bite into.

A whirl of torrid dust veils the picture.