Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

• It’s a pity one can’t imagine what one can’t compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Art, Dream

  Tags in African, Pity

• A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Art

  Tags in Writer

• The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Rocks

• Don’t cry, I’m sorry to have deceived you so much, but that’s how life is.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Life

• Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Life
• 

  And the rest is rust and stardust.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rest, Rust

• It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Love

• I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Like, Writing

• Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Vast, Series, Writing

• The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Still, Writing
• 

  I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Love, Memory

  Tags in More, Matter
• 

  Our best yesterdays are now a foul pile of crumpled names.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Best, Foul

• There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Airplane

• Caress the detail, the divine detail.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Details

• All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Much, Matter

• I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Should, Mind

• The more gifted and talkative one’s characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in More, Mind

• Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Known

• Treading the soil of the moon, palpitating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one’s stomach the separation from terra – these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Soil, Know

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Making

Vladimir Nabokov (68)

Birth:	22nd April, 1899
Death:	2nd July, 1977
Nationality:	American, Russian
Profession:	Novelist, Professor

About

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian American novelist. Nabokov's first nine novels were in Russian. He then rose to international prominence as a writer of English prose. He also made serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer.

Related Authors

• Bodie Thoene
• Frederik Pohl
• Mark Haddon
• James Stephens
• Vikas Swarup
• Raymond E. Feist
• Brad Thor
• Charles Finch
• Yevgeny Zamyatin
• Malinda Lo

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 23rd May

Births

• 1947 - Michael Porter
• 1958 - Mitch Albom
• 1950 - Martin McGuinness
• 1949 - Alan Garcia Perez
• 1928 - Rosemary Clooney

Deaths

• 2002 - Sam Snead
• 1986 - Sterling Hayden
• 2006 - Lloyd Bentsen
• 1995 - Owen Hart
• 1868 - Kit Carson