Quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

You are sure you are not coming with me? Is there no hope of your coming? Tell me only this

So it went on, that obsession and that despair and that nightmarish impossibility to swindle destiny, until a certain first of April, of all dates.

her husband had such a soothing capacity for showing how silent a man could be if he strictly avoided comments on the weather.

He broke my heart. You merely broke my life

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 to live with me? I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope

During these periods of teaching, Charles Xavier made it a rule to sleep at a pied-à-terre he had rented, as any scholarly citizen would, in Coriolanus Lane: a charming, central-heated studio with adjacent bathroom and kitchenette.

the mad conjurer at the ward whose pet obsession was that gravity had something to do with the blood circulation of a Supreme Being.

Mucho después de su muerte sentía que sus pensamientos flotaban en torno a los míos.

I have lived an agonizing life, and I would like to describe that agony to you--but I am obsessed by the fear that there will not be time enough.

parts, solid and ample

Van tussled with his slightly overweight conscience (both grinning like old pals in their old gymnasium) — and accepted Dick's offer.

I noticed, for instance, that dreams under the midnight sun tended to be highly coloured, and this my friend the photographer confirmed.

A procession of silver pencils marched down an endless tunnel of corruption.

I have but followed nature. I am nature's faithful hound. Why then this horror that I cannot shake off?

Oh, Lolita, had you loved me thus!

while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.

Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again.

Wildly, I pursued the shadow of her infidelity; but the scent I travelled upon was so slight as to be practically undistinguishable from a madman's fancy.

All the trees in the world are journeying somewhere. Perpetual pilgrimage.

We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.

A wonderful point in favor of some kind of hereafter is this: When the mind rejects as childishly absurd a paradise with musical angels or abstract colonnades with Horace and Milton in togas conversing and walking together through the eternal twilight, or the protracted voluptas of the orient or any other eternity -- such as the one with devils and porcupines -- we forget that if we could have imagined life before living it would have seemed more improbable than all our hereafters

Uvijek se možete pouzdati u ubojicu da ?e pisati kitnjastim stilom.

Ruh bir varoluÅŸ biçiminden baÅŸka bir ÅŸey deÄŸildir -sürekli bir durum hiç deÄŸildir-, dalgalar?n? bulur ve izlerseniz her ruh sizinki olabilir. Ölümden sonraki yaÅŸam denen ÅŸey, istediÄŸiniz ruhta, hatta birbirininkinden farks?z azap yüklerinin bilincinde bile olmayan istediÄŸiniz say?da ruhta bilinçle yaÅŸamak yeterliliÄŸidir belki de - baÅŸka bir ÅŸey deÄŸil.

I have nothing but very sad associations with the Old and rotting World. No colored ads in your magazines will change the situation.' 'My