942 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

There are few physiques I loathe more than the heavy low-slung pelvis, thick calves and deplorable complexion of the average coed (in whom I see, maybe, the coffin of coarse female flesh within which my nymphets are buried alive).

I esteem my colleagues as I do my own self, I esteem them for two things: because they are able to find perfect felicity in specialized knowledge and because they are not apt to commit physical murder.

Feeling a bit nervous, as most people do at the prospect of seeing a doctor, I thought I would buy on my way to him something soothing to prevent an accelerated pulse from misleading credulous science.

-Why do you live in hotels? -It simplifies postal matters, it eliminates the nuisance of private ownership, it confirms me in my favorite habit-- the habit of freedom.

And the most poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from the chorus.

Dostoevski's The Double is his best work though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's "Nose.

A writer is lost when he grows interested in such questions as 'what is art?' and 'what is an artist's duty?

The decrees of society are temporary ones; what Tolstoy is interested in are the eternal demands of morality.

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.