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
character past world
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.
fiction world fit
A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
art simple world
Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.
world meaningless
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
depression mind world
... my mind lay limp in an empty world.
reality play world
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
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.
desire world defiance
I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
die men therefore
Other men die; but I Am not another; therefore I'll not die
creation discern fragrant future kindly lies literary mirrors objects ordinary portray posterity reflected tenderness
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 . . .
explorer feeling form known panic pit romantic sensation separation soil splendor stomach treading
Treading the soil of the moon, palpitating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra - these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known
broken dull man poor second
Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the first - a dull man writing broken English, the second - a broken man writing dull English.
aesthetic affords art call connected exists fiction insofar shall states work
For me, a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.
death great greater life
Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.