Vladimir Nabokov - Book Quotes

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Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

Vladimir Nabokov
…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.

Vladimir Nabokov
We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.

Vladimir Nabokov
Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.

Vladimir Nabokov
After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution "English language" for "romantic novel" would make this elegant formula more correct.

Vladimir Nabokov
I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.

Vladimir Nabokov
I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.

Vladimir Nabokov
When a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else. Perhaps the same is true of a book.

Vladimir Nabokov
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

Vladimir Nabokov
There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.

Vladimir Nabokov
I think he's crude, I think he's medieval, and I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me. I don't have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don't see umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons.

Vladimir Nabokov
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.

Vladimir Nabokov
When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.

Vladimir Nabokov
Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile.

Vladimir Nabokov
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.

Vladimir Nabokov