Art Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.

— Vladimir Nabokov

There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.

— Vladimir Nabokov

“You have to be an artist and a madman...”

— Vladimir Nabokov

“The isms go, the ist dies, art remains”

— Vladimir Nabokov

“If sex is the sermon made of art, love is the lady of that tower.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.

— Vladimir Nabokov

“I will contend until I am shot that art as soon as it is brought into contact with politics inevitably sinks to…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.

— Vladimir Nabokov

“A writer is lost when he grows interested in such questions as 'what is art?' and 'what is an artist's duty?”

— Vladimir Nabokov

“what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art”

— Vladimir Nabokov

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

— Vladimir Nabokov

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

— Vladimir Nabokov

In this crazy mirror of terror and art a pseudo-quotation made up of obscure Shakespeareanisms (Chapter Three) somehow produces, despite its lack…

— Vladimir Nabokov

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake", there can be no question that what makes a work…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“I'm thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art, And this is the only…

— Vladimir Nabokov

The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always…

— Vladimir Nabokov

You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your…

— Vladimir Nabokov

The social or economic structure of the ideal state is of little concern to me. My desires are modest. Portraits of the…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Literature under despotism: “The personality of the artist should develop freely and without restraint. One thing, however, we demand: acknowledgement of our…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“He suggested I play golf, but finally agreed to give me something that, he said, "would really work"; and going to a…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“That man, especially when he slept, when his features were motionless, showed me my own face, my mask, the flawlessly pure image…

— Vladimir Nabokov

There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“I was crazy about goal keeping. In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art had been always surrounded with a halo…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“... one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Poor L. We are sorry that you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid into…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Great sleepless artists who had to die for a few hours in order to live for centuries.”

— Vladimir Nabokov