Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

Most popular Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
— Vladimir Nabokov Strong Opinions

parody

The good writer is first of all an enchanter. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
The good writer is first of all an enchanter.
— Vladimir Nabokov The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: 1940–1971

writers

Curiosity ... is insubordination in its purest form. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Curiosity ... is insubordination in its purest form.
— Vladimir Nabokov Bend Sinister

curiosity

Our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind? - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
— Vladimir Nabokov

psychiatrist

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
— Vladimir Nabokov Radio Times

literature

Beauty plus pity—this is the closest we can get to a definition of art. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Beauty plus pity—this is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
— Vladimir Nabokov Metamorphosis

art

Initially, I was unaware that time, so boundless at first blush, was a prison. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Initially, I was unaware that time, so boundless at first blush, was a prison.
— Vladimir Nabokov Speak, Memory

time

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
— Vladimir Nabokov The Gift

aphorisms

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
— Vladimir Nabokov

writers

Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
— Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire

life

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
— Vladimir Nabokov Strong Opinions

novelists

When a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else.  Perhaps the same is true of a book. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
When a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else.  Perhaps the same is true of a book.
— Vladimir Nabokov Aaron’s Rod

books

That trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand...is as old as the quills....  My characters are galley slaves. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
That trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand...is as old as the quills....  My characters are galley slaves.
— Vladimir Nabokov in The Paris Review
Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals.  It is a mental torture I find debasing. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals.  It is a mental torture I find debasing.
— Vladimir Nabokov Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited

sleep

Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors; the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors; the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped.
— Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire

Russia

Literature was born not the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him. - Vladimir Nabokov quote.
Literature was born not the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.
— Vladimir Nabokov Lectures on Literature

literature

Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished manuscript.
— Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire

masterpiece