942 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

There was no Lo to behold.

He traveled, he studied, he taught ... He learned to appreciate the singular little thrill of following dark byways in strange towns, knowing well that he would discover nothing, save filth and ennui and discarded merry cans with labels and the jungle jingles of exported jazz. He often felt that the famed cities, the museums, the ancient torture house and the suspended garden were but places on the map of his own madness.

Non può esservi alcuna sottomissione – perché il fatto stesso che parliamo di questi argomenti indica che vi è curiosità, e la curiosità è insubordinazione nella forma più pura.

Lighted advertisements went running up dark red facades and dissipating again. He would pass girls; he would turn to look; but the prettier the face, the harder it was to take the plunge.

Russia - the country of Tolstoy, Stanislavski, Raskolnikov, and other great and good men.

...for she soars with the wildest hyperbole when not tagging after the most pedestrian dictum.

The few times I said to myself anywhere: ‘Now that’s a nice spot for a permanent home,’ I would immediately hear in my mind the thunder of an avalanche carrying away the hundreds of far places which I would destroy by the very act of settling in one particular nook of the earth.

The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.

Good by-aye!" she chanted, my American sweet immortal dead love; for she is dead and immortal if you are reading this.