942 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

But I want to make sure of our whereabouts and whenabouts,′ said Van. ‘It is a philosophical need.

If told I am a bad poet, I smile; but if told I am a poor scholar, I reach for my heaviest dictionary.

The mind writes with a pen, the heart, with a pencil.

Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let’s even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.

Beauty plus pity – that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.

Oh,” said Haze, “poor me should know, I went through that when I was a kid: boys twisting one’s hair, hurting one’s breasts, flipping one’s skirt.

That human life is but a first installment of the serial soul and that one’s individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly dissolution, becomes something more than an optimistic conjecture, and even more than a matter of religious faith, when we remember that only commonsense rules immortality out.

No jewels, save my eyes, do I own, but I have a rose which is even softer than my rosy lips. And a quiet youth said: ‘There is nothing softer than your heart.’ And I lowered my gaze...

The weather this morning was so-so: dullish, but warm, a boiled-milk sky, with skin- but if you pushed it aside with a teaspoon, the sun was really nice, so I wore my white trousers.