942 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

There is only one school: that of talent.

Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest ‘warmth’ which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be.

He started as a maker of Cartesian devils – imps of bottle glass bobbing up and down in methylate-filled tubes hawked during Catkin Week on the boulevards. He.

The strange mirage-shimmer standing in for death should not appear too soon in the chronicle and yet it should permeate the first amorous scenes.

I’m walking out now into the soft light, the cooling him of evening, and I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and still many more, so very many tomorrows.

As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform... them... that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude.

I love you, I’m waiting for you unbearably.

Let me add, just in case, that experts on literary “schools” should wisely refrain this time from casually dragging in “the influence of German Impressionists”: I do not know German and have never read the Impressionists – whoever they are.

Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life’s foolscap.