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
book two three
Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile.
art fiction rust
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.
world meaningless
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
mirrors phantoms population
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
girl book writing
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
mother eight air
At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.
nature past smell
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
art important individual
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
thinking language
I don't think in any language. I think in images.
butterfly dark kissing
Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .
art simple differences
I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.
real numbers repetition
The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition
trying littles forests
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.
memories immortality loses
You lose your immortality when you lose your memory.