Vladimir Nabokov quotes

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.

Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as "nymphets."

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

I confess, I do not believe in time.

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.

Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.

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

Solitude is the playfield of Satan.

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

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.

The tiny madman in his padded cell.