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 mean cocky
Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
links genius invisible
Genius is finding the invisible link between things.
luxury hours wells
The compensation for a death sentence is the knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.
music stupid simple
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
dream truth past
It is certainly not then-not in dreams- but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.
yesterday names foul
Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
home past
One is always at home in one's past...
depression mind world
... my mind lay limp in an empty world.
arrows mark
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
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.
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.
environment fallacy rely
A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
writing men two
Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English.
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