Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Great novels are above all great fairy tales . . . literature does not tell the truth but makes it up.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine.… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“ Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“In its published form, this book is being read, I assume, in the first years of 2000 A.D. (1935 plus eighty or… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impression that I did not manage to be… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“When, on a Sunday evening in May 1876, Anna throws herself under the freight train, she has existed more than four years… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel which I dislike; and anyway it was not he who fathered… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only been defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely,… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“I am aware of many things being quite as important as good writing and good reading; but in all things it is… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“No matter how many times we read "King Lear," never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry,… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“I will not mention the name (and what bits of it I happen to give here appear in decorous disguise) of that… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Between the ages of ten and fifteen in St. Petersburg, I must have read more fiction and poetry—English, Russian and French—than in… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and,… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Speaking of novels,’ I said, ‘you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge,… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Drug addicts, especially young ones, are conformists flocking together in sticky groups, and I do not write for groups, nor approve of… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“... one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both truth and art. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“When I hear a critic speaking of an author’s sincerity I know that either the critic or the author is a fool” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“...under no circumstances would he [Humbert Humbert] have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the least risk of a row.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
“Ami azt illeti, Vannak kezdtek nagyon tetszeni a fák is, a csodák is meg az Adák is.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless. — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
“It isn’t possible. I cannot imagine it. Come on over here, you foolish little doe, and tell me on what day I shall die.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
“Precautions to be taken in the case Of freak reincarnation: what to do On suddenly discovering that you Are now a young and vulnerable… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
“It is indeed a tricky name. It is often misspelt, because the eye tends to regard the "a" of the first syllable as a… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
“(T)here exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time.” — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share
![“I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. [...] Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we…” quote by Vladimir Nabokov](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b66/vladimir-nabokov-198_books_i-have-often-noticed-that-we-are-incline_463200.jpg)
