Quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Only experts, for experts, should probe a mind's misery.

Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale.

Once a perfect little beauty in a tartan frock, with a clatter put her heavily armed foot near me upon the bench to dip her slim bare arms into me and tighten the strap of her roller skate, and I dissolved in the sun, with my book for fig leaf, as her auburn ringlets fell all over her skinned knee, and the shadow of leaves I shared pulsated and melted on her radiant limb next to my chameleonic cheek.

You are an artist,' I said -- to say something.

I simply love that tinge of Botticellian pink, that raw rose about the lips, those wet, matted eyelashes…

Now the colored pencils in more detail.

I may as well confess that I gave Luzhin my French governess, my pocket chess set, my sweet temper, and the stone of the peach I plucked in my own walled garden.

It is not the parts that matter, it is their combinations.

but as there is in the world not a single human who can speak my language;

Mr. Wilson affirms that the only characteristic Nabokov trait in my translation (aside from an innate sado-masochistic urge to torture both the reader and himself, as Mr. Wilson puts it in a clumsy attempt to stick a particularly thick and rusty pin into my effigy) is my addiction to rare and unfamiliar words. It does not occur to him that I may have rare and unfamiliar things to convey; that is his loss.

I first understood that things which to me had seemed natural were actually forbidden

Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?

What was it—through everything terrible, nocturnal, unwieldy—what was that thing? It had been last to move aside, reluctantly yielding to the huge, heavy wagons of sleep, and now it was first to hurry back—so pleasant, so very pleasant—swelling, growing more distinct, suffusing his heart with warmth: Marthe is coming today!

How little I knew of his life! But now I was learning something every instant. The door standing slightly ajar was the best link imaginable.

The years are passing, my dear, and presently nobody will know what you and I know.

Here speaks Professor--' There followed a preposterous little explosion. 'I conduct the classes in Russian. Mrs Fire, who is now working at the library part-time--

Before letting go he looked down. Some kind of hasty preparations were under way there: the window reflections gathered together and leveled themselves out, the whole chasm was seen to divide into dark and pale squares, and at the instant when Luzhin unclenched his hand, at the instant when icy air gushed into his month, he saw exactly what kind of eternity was obligingly and inexorably spread out before him.

Oh, aprieto el gatillo, sin duda, pero las balas caen blandamente al suelo, una tras otra, desde el tímido cañón. En esos sueños, mi única preocupación es ocultar el fracaso a mi enemigo, que se aburre cada vez más.

We must assume, I think, that the forward projection of what imagination he had, stopped at the act, on the brink of all its possible consequences; ghost consequences, comparable to the ghost toes of an amputee or to the fanning out of additional squares which a chess knight (that skipspace piece), standing on a marginal file, feels in phantom extensions beyond the board, but which have no effect whatever on his real moves, on the real play.

the name that the astute reader has guessed long ago

One of the latticed squares in a small cobwebby casement window at the turn of the staircase was glazed with ruby, and that raw wound among the unstained rectangles in its asymmetrical position — a knight's move from the top — always strangely disturbed me.

this may be neither here nor there but I have to say it. Life is very short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after

A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.

Tenho de reproduzir o impacto aquela visão instantânea por meio de uma sequência de palavras, mas seu acúmulo físico na página faz com que se perca a nitidez da percepção global. p. 112