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.
("Lolita")
More Quotes from Vladimir Nabokov:
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.Vladimir Nabokov
Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.
Vladimir Nabokov
You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
Vladimir Nabokov
Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
Vladimir Nabokov
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Vladimir Nabokov
A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection
Vladimir Nabokov
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Books Quotes, Literature Quotes, Mind Quotes, Poetry QuotesBased on Keywords: anomalous, hot-dog, obediently
Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
My only aversion to vice, is the price.
Victor Buono