942 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Solitude was corrupting me. I needed company and care.

The lovely thing about humanity is that at times one may be unaware of doing right, but one is always aware of doing wrong.

Measure me while I live – after it will be too late.

Although I do not care for the slogan “art for art’s sake”, there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.

Our imagination flies – we are its shadow on the earth.

While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life’s full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.

I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.

From early childhood his mother had taught him that to discuss in public a profound emotional experience-which, in the open air, immediately evanesces and fades, and, oddly, becomes similar to an analogous experience of one’s interlocutor-was not only vulgar, but also a sin against sentiment.

You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy... in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs... the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.