Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.

Genius is finding the invisible link between things.

Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.

Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.

Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.

Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.

And the rest is rust and stardust.

Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.

We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.

Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!

Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.

Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.

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.

I don't think in any language. I think in images.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

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.

The square root of I is I.

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.

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.