Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin; 22 April 1899c – 2 July 1977) was a Russian-American novelist. His first nine novels were in Russian, and he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 April 1899
CitySaint Petersburg, Russia
CountryUnited States of America
heart blood rainbow
In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood.
writing sitting-still reactions
It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
dream country years
Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you love me thus!
moving writing trying
There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.
years childhood sorrow
The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.
art definitions pity
Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
games lessons satire
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
dying knows
You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.
moon sun dandelions
Most of the dandelions had changed from suns into moons.
art humanity mind
Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.
heart broke my-heart
He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.
art imagination shadow
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
shadow azure windowpane
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane...
art writing should-have
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.