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
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.
home past
One is always at home in one's past...
pride lust sloth
All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.
reality deny knows
I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.
summer memories reality
A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
art writing fiction
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both truth and art.