We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds.

— Vladimir Nabokov

We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever open

— Vladimir Nabokov

We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Whatever his secret was, I have learned secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being -- not a constant state -- that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden.

— Vladimir Nabokov

When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some impeccably narrowing corridor.

— Vladimir Nabokov

While the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Who grins in official circumstances?

— Vladimir Nabokov

Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely on.

— Vladimir Nabokov

You forget, my good man, that what the artist perceives is, primarily, the difference between things. It is the vulgar who note their resemblance.

— Vladimir Nabokov

You have to be an artist and a madman...

— Vladimir Nabokov