At a very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it.
Vladimir NabokovI see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.โฆ Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
Vladimir NabokovSome peopleโand I am one of themโhate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
Vladimir NabokovA masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
Vladimir NabokovLife with you was lovelyโand when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink โvโ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering โl.โ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.
Vladimir NabokovThe commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual;" and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.
Vladimir Nabokov