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
differences people perception
Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
men space envelopes
Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish.
memories age strange
It is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age-strange, strange are the mishaps of memory.
book bridges soul
…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.
white silence horizon
To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena — all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.
airplane aphorism aeroplanes
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
character chekhov emphasis
No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
revolution revelations
Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
destiny hands missing
Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some 'future' events may be linked to others, O.K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.
past derivatives originality
Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
taken mean mirrors
The term "bend sinister" means a heraldic bar or band drawn from the left side (and popularly, but incorrectly, supposed to denote bastardy). This choice of title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life, a sinistral and sinister world. The title's drawback is that a solemn reader looking for "general ideas" or "human interest" (which is much the same thing) in a novel may be led to look for them in this one.
fiction world fit
A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
style matter firsts
All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.
movie writing long-ago
Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.