Vladimir Nabokov Quotes (137 Quotes)
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- I want you to leave your incidental Dick, and this awful hole, and come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- 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.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Pale Fire")
- I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- 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 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.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Pale Fire")
- If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impression that I did not manage to be happy.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Pale Fire")
- If you want to make a movie out of my book, have one of these faces gently melt into my own, while I look.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
- We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.
(Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita")
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