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Vladimir Nabokov Biography

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (/nəˈbɔːkəf, ˈnæbəˌkɔːf, -ˌkɒf/; Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced [vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪr nɐˈbokəf] ( listen), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin; 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899[a] – 2 July 1977) was a Russian-American novelist, translator and entomologist. His first nine novels were in Russian, but he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose.

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Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this: "O rainbow-colored gods. . .

Addresses, Ample, Crowds, Gods, Open, Rainbow

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

Group, Groups, Mediocrity, Multiplication, Nothing, World

To begin with, let us take the following motto. . . Literature is Love. Now we can continue.

Begin, Following, Literature, Love, Motto

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

Fiction, Fit, Masterpiece, World

I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust

Decay, Dumped, Rust, Stardust, Weed

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

Dark, Life, Life Is, Message, Messages

Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.

Black, Gray, Hints, Sense, Two

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

Existence, Funny, Inspirational, Life, Masterpiece, Series

He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.

Dismal, Insomnia, Insomniac, Night, Sleep

Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.

Dream, Grieving, Hoping, Lost, Men, Reality

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

Aeroplanes, Airplane, Airplanes, Aphorism, Aphorisms, Stay

There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.

Fiction, Historical Novels, Instance, Obscenities, Powerful, Varieties

It is nothing but a kind of a microcosmos of communism - all that psychiatry', rumbled Pnin. . . 'Why not leave their private sorrow to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?

Communism, People, Private, Sorrow, Thing, Why Not

No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.

Country, Expected, Past, Preposterous, Writing, Young

. . . for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.

Established, House, Howling, Land, Used, Years

If he failed the first time he took his driver's licence test, it was mainly because he started an argument with the examiner in an ill-timed effort to prove that nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled. He was more circumspect the next time, and passed.

Effort, Examiner, Light, Passed, Prove, Soul

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

Breaking Promises, Explain, Sea, Wave, Whole

Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.

Head, Oval, Philistines, Realgood, Rounds

Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head.

Head, Mentioned, Names, Running, Steps, Would Be

To a greater or lesser extent there goes on in every person a struggle between two forces: the longing for privacy and the urge to go places: the introversion, interest directed within oneself toward one's own inner life of vigorous thought and fancy; and extroversion, interest directed outward, toward the external world of people and tangible values.

External, Extroversion, Journey, Struggle, Thought, Two

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