More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition
Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
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.
Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.
Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
