More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Genius is finding the invisible link between things.
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.
A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.
Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.
