Vladimir Nabokov

My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.

To each, or about each, of his colleagues he had said at one time or other, something... something impossible to recall in this or that case and difficult to define in general terms -- some careless bright and harsh trifle that had grazed a stretch of raw flesh.

No free man needs a God; but was I free?How fully I felt nature glued to meAnd how my childish palate loved the tasteHalf-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!My picture book was at an early ageThe painted parchment papering our cage:Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun;Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenonThe iridule - when, beautiful and strange,In a bright sky above a mountain rangeOne opal cloudlet in an oval formReflects the rainbow of a thunderstormWhich in a distant valley has been staged -For we are most artistically caged.

Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.

We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds.

Light in comparison with darkness is a void.

You have to be an artist and a madman...

Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle.

She is a great gobbler of books, but reads only trash, memorizing nothing and leaving out the longer descriptions.

I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle...

I discovered in nature the non utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.

as if it were a point of honor__hich, indeed, a point of art often is.

At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

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

All religions are based on obsolete terminology.

But then what does it matter whence comes the gentle nudge that jars the soul into motion and sets it rolling, doomed never again to stop?