942 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

L'estil i l'estructura són l'essència d'un bon llibre; les grans idees són estupideses.El estilo y la estructura son a esencia de un buen libro; las grandes ideas son estupideces

Two interesting characteristics distinguished Leonard Blorenge, Chairman of French Literature and Language; he disliked Literature and he had no French.

I swear I am happy. I have realized that the only happiness in this world is to observe, to spy, to watch, to scrutinize oneself and others, to be nothing but a big, slightly vitreous, somewhat bloodshot, unblinking eye. I swear that this is happiness.

And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.

...he was more of a poltergeist than a lodger

Esos contactos incompletos producían en nuestros cuerpos jóvenes, sanos e inexpertos, un estado de exasperación tal, que ni aun el agua fría y azul, bajo la cual nos aferrábamos, podía aliviar.

Pnin slowly walked under solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended the destinies of the quick.

One had to forget - because one could not live with the thought that this graceful, fragile, tender young woman with those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background, had been brought in a cattle car to an extermination camp and killed by an injection of phenol into the heart, into the gentle heart one had heard beating under one's lips in the dusk of the past.

Fame in our day is too common to be confused with the enduring glow around the deserving book.