Top 500 Vladimir Nabokov Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

2. “And the rest is rust and stardust.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

3. “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

4. “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Book Quotes

5. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Quotes About Fire

6. “I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

7. “Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

8. “Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

9. “The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

10. “The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

11. “Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!”

— Vladimir Nabokov

12. “Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Creativity Quotes

13. “Don’t touch me; I’ll die if you touch me.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

14. “Caress the detail, the divine detail.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

15. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

16. “But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

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

— Vladimir Nabokov

18. “And yet I adore him. I think he’s quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

19. “Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

20. “Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

21. “Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

22. “The lost glove is happy.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

23. “Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!”

— Vladimir Nabokov

24. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Quotes About Numbers

25. “Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes, Good Night Quotes, Goodnight Quotes

26. “Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

27. “In reading, one should notice and fondle details.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

28. “Genius is finding the invisible link between things.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

29. “Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

30. “I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

31. “The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Summer Quotes

32. “Literature was not born the day when a boy crying “wolf, wolf” came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying “wolf, wolf” and there was no wolf behind him.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

33. “Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!”

— Vladimir Nabokov

34. “I have rewritten – often several times – every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

35. “Life is a message scribbled in the dark.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

36. “Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Featured in: Strong Quotes

37. “I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise – a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames – but still a paradise.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

38. “Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

39. “The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

40. “Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

41. “Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

42. “The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

43. “There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

44. “Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

45. “All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

46. “Dear Jesus, do something.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

47. “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

48. “I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

49. “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

50. “I don’t think in any language. I think in images.”

— Vladimir Nabokov