There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity. – Vladimir Nabokov
I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. – Vladimir Nabokov
I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading. – Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. – Vladimir Nabokov
Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained. – 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
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. – Vladimir Nabokov
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual. – Vladimir Nabokov
Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. – 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
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
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child. – Vladimir Nabokov
Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. – Vladimir Nabokov
The more gifted and talkative one’s characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind. – 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