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
art facts fancy
There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.
book ideas talent
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
moon sky black
Stirless, I stand at the window, and in the black bowl of the sky glows like a golden drop of honey the mellow moon
writing men two
Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English.
arrows mark
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
depression mind world
... my mind lay limp in an empty world.
lying mirrors ordinary
Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .
dog
Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
rich glory articles
The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.
men space wife
Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.
men needs found
My God died young. Theolatry i found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God; but was I free?
environment fallacy rely
A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
keys fists pockets
And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.
morning personality awakening
Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.