More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
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.
I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
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.
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.
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
