More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed—then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.
The future is but the obsolete in reverse.
I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
