More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.
I don't think in any language. I think in images.
It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
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.
Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.
Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
And the rest is rust and stardust.
