More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed—then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
