Vladimir Nabokov Quotes – Author of Lolita
We have curated a list of the best Vladimir Nabokov Quotes. Let’s get a look at the list of quotes.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. He was also known as Vladimir Sirin, he was born in Russian and he wrote his first nine novels in the Russian language while he was in berlin. Lolita is one of the most famous books which he has written and it was ranked fourth in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels in 2007. Also, Pale Fire, Speak, and Memory are some of the famous books by Vladimir Nabokov.
We have talked a lot about the writer, now let’s get into the list of quotes by Vladimir Nabokov.
List of Best quotes from Vladimir Nabokov:
1. “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
2. “And the rest is rust and stardust.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
3. “Our imagination flies — we are its shadow on the earth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
4. “I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes”
― Vladimir Nabokov
5. “He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
6. “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.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
7. “Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”
― Vladimir Nabokov
8. “I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
9. “Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
10. “Oh, don’t cry, I’m so sorry I cheated so much, but that’s the way things are.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
11. “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
12. “Words without experience are meaningless.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
13. “I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
14. “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”
― Vladimir Nabokov
15. “All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
16. “We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
17. “I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago – but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man’s child. She could fade and wither – I didn’t care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
18. “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms, she was always Lolita.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
19. “Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
20. “Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
21. “Literature was not born the day when a boy crying “wolf, wolf” came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying “wolf, wolf” and there was no wolf behind him.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
22. “Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
23. “The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
24. “Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
25. “Let all of life be an unfettered howl.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
26. “And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
27. “Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
28. “I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! And there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one. Lolita girl, brave Dolly Schiller.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
29. “I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
30. “I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
31. “And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
32. “I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust”
― Vladimir Nabokov
33. “A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
34. “Dear Jesus, do something.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
35. “Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
36. “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
37. “We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
38. “I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
39. “if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
40. “I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
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Wrapping up
That is the list of Top Vladimir Nabokov Quotes, If you liked it then don’t forget to share this on your social media handles and if you have any suggestions then please let us know by commenting down below.
Sourabh Sharma is a hobbyist book reader, Entrepreneur, and a literature student at Delhi University. A blog writer by day and a book reader by night, he is oathed to discuss himself in a third person but can be persuaded to do so from time to time.