Vladimir Nabokov Zitate

„Nichts auf der Welt verabscheue ich mehr als kollektive Aktivität, diese öffentliche Badeanstalt, wo sich die Behaarten und die Glitschigen zu einer Multiplizierung der Mittelmäßigkeit treffen.“

„Ich weiß nicht, ob jemals festgestellt wurde, daß ein Hauptmerkmal des Lebens die Separatheit ist. Wenn uns keine Fleischesschicht umhüllt, sterben wir. Der Mensch existiert nur in dem Maße, in dem er von seiner Umwelt abgesondert ist.“

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

“I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes”

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl.”

“And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.”

“Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me.”

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”

“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”

“She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

“Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.”

“I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.”

“And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.”

“Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.”

“I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”

“I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”

“The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.”

“A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.”

“Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.”

“But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

“My Carmen," I said (I used to call her that sometimes) "we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed."
"… Because, really," I continued, "there is no point in staying here."
"There is no point in staying anywhere," said Lolita.”

“The lost glove is happy.”

“All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.”

“We can at last describe his tie, an Easter gift from a dressy butcher, his brother in law in Onhava: imitation silk, colour chocolate brown barred with red, the end tucked into the shirt between the second and third buttons - a Zemblan fashion of the nineteen thirties.”

“Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.”

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.”

“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”

“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”

“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”