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
beautiful attractive torture
Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.
color sky flames
I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.
book creative enough
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
kissing loving-you feelings
I cannot help feeling there is something essentially wrong about love. Friends may quarrel or drift apart, close relations too, but there is not this pang, this pathos, this fatality which clings to love. Friendship never has that doomed look. Why, what is the matter? I have not stopped loving you, but because I cannot go on kissing your dim dear face, we must part, we must part.
advantage disadvantages
Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
teacher three storyteller
A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.
art children simple
Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
hurt matter i-adore-you
I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
inspirational funny life
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
moon sea light
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
obsolete reverse
The future is but the obsolete in reverse.
humble knowing ego
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
world baths groups
There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.
mean feelings mind
I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.