World Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!

— Vladimir Nabokov

... my mind lay limp in an empty world.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and…

— Vladimir Nabokov

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

It is nothing but a kind of a microcosmos of communism - all that psychiatry', rumbled Pnin ... 'Why not leave their…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture…

— Vladimir Nabokov

...in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to…

— Vladimir Nabokov

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for…

— Vladimir Nabokov

...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon…

— Vladimir Nabokov

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today…

— Vladimir Nabokov

a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would…

— Vladimir Nabokov

To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no…

— Vladimir Nabokov

The term "bend sinister" means a heraldic bar or band drawn from the left side (and popularly, but incorrectly, supposed to denote…

— Vladimir Nabokov

To a greater or lesser extent there goes on in every person a struggle between two forces: the longing for privacy and…

— 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