Should Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?

— Vladimir Nabokov

In reading, one should notice and fondle details.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.

— Vladimir Nabokov

There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be,…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I should allow only my heart to have imagination; and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's…

— Vladimir Nabokov

A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche…

— Vladimir Nabokov

A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The…

— 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

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child… My hemmings and hawings over…

— Vladimir Nabokov

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my…

— Vladimir Nabokov

No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this…

— Vladimir Nabokov