quotes from classic

There is only one school of literature - that of talent.

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

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

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

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

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H. H., and one wanted H. H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

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

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Today one does not hear much about him.... The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Solitude is the playfield of Satan.

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Among the many gifts I showered on Martin, I was careful not to include talent. How easy it would have been to make him an artist, a writer; h...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

The wedding was a quiet affair, and when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover did I experience only bitterness and distaste?...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

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

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

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

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes before she made a sound.

more quotes from Stanley Kunitz

Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.

more quotes from Stanley Kunitz

The following passage is not for the general reader, but for the particular idiot who, because he lost a fortune in some crash, thinks he unde...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Leonid Ivanovich Shigaev is dead.... The suspension dots, customary in Russian obituaries, must represent the footprints of words that have de...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

One way to do it might be by making the scenery penetrate the automobile. A polished black sedan was a good subject, especially if parked at t...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

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...

more quotes from Vladimir Nabokov