Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Paris Review, Oct. 1967
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Wisconson Studies in Contemporary Literature, Spring 1967
The reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night ... is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, "That in Aleppo Once...," Nabokov's Dozen
The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Strong Opinions
Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, letter to Kirill Nabokov, c. 1930
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Pale Fire
A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, "Philistines and Philistinism"
I don't think in any language. I think in images.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, BBC interview, 1962
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, foreward, Strong Opinions
Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Lectures on Literature
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, "A Russian Beauty"
Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Strong Opinions
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