Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.
Vladimir NabokovMind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: thatโs when you get shooting stars.
Vladimir NabokovImagination, 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 NabokovMy private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatusesโthe baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditionsโwhich the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.
Vladimir Nabokov