The tiny madman in his padded cell. – Vladimir Nabokov
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. – Vladimir Nabokov
I confess, I do not believe in time. – Vladimir Nabokov
Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know. – Vladimir Nabokov
Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words. – Vladimir Nabokov
It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail. – Vladimir Nabokov
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. – Vladimir Nabokov
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. – Vladimir Nabokov
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist. – 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. – Vladimir Nabokov
Genius is an African who dreams up snow. – Vladimir Nabokov
Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. – Vladimir Nabokov
To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute. – Vladimir Nabokov
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual. – Vladimir Nabokov
Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. – 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. – Vladimir Nabokov
The world itself is but a series of footnotes to a vast unfinished masterpiece. – Vladimir Nabokov
