942 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler’s helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion.

I am here through an error – not in this prison, specifically – but in this whole terrible, striped world;.

The one who kills is always his victim’s inferior.

In my self-made seraglio, I was a radiant and robust Turk, deliberately, in the full consciousness of his freedom, postponing the moment of actually enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves.

I lied as a nightingale sings, ecstatically, self-obliviously; reveling in the new life-harmony which I was creating.

I am ready to give you all of my blood, if I had to – it’s hard to explain – sounds flat – but that’s how it is.

Forget me now, but remember me afterwards, when the bitter part is forgotten. This.

The muse of invention handed me a rifle and I shot a white bear who sat down and said: Ah.

A poet’s purified truth can cause no pain, no offense. True art is above false honor.