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
country dog book
We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.
humble knowing ego
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
religion details spirituality
Caress the detail, the divine detail.
book writing essence
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
beauty beautiful moving
Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!
shadow azure windowpane
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane...
girl book writing
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
roots squares square-roots
The square root of I is I.
nature past smell
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
solitude satan
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
heart broke my-heart
He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.
moon sun dandelions
Most of the dandelions had changed from suns into moons.
years childhood sorrow
The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.
moving writing trying
There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.