Vladimir Nabokov World Quotations

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.

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.

... my mind lay limp in an empty world.

Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!

I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.