Author of quotes: Vladimir Nabokov

Verse K

My personal tragedy, which cannot, which should not be anyone else's concern, is that I had to leave my native language, my native dialect, my rich, infinitely rich and obedient Russian language, for the sake of second-rate English.

But I started to write another thing - and nothing came of it - I furiously tore up five pages. And now it’s okay, it’s rolling - maybe I’ll even take off from the ground on wheels and that two-winged shadow will run across the paper, for the sake of which it’s only worth writing.

February 10, 1936

The secret he was striving for was simplicity, harmonious simplicity, striking more than the most complex magic.

But no one had yet been able to get to the bottom of what was most captivating in it: it was the mysterious ability of the soul to perceive in life only what once attracted and tormented in childhood, at that time when the soul’s sense of smell is unmistakable; look for the funny and touching; to constantly feel unbearable, tender pity for a creature living helplessly and miserably, to feel, a thousand miles away, how in some Sicily a thin-legged donkey with a shaggy belly is being roughly beaten. When she actually met the offended creature, there was a feeling of a legendary eclipse, when an inexplicable night sets in, and ashes fly, and blood appears on the walls - and it seemed that if now - right now - you don’t help, you won’t be able to stop someone else’s torment , the existence of which in such a world conducive to happiness is impossible to explain, she herself will suffocate, die, her heart will not stand it. And therefore she lived in constant secret excitement, constantly anticipating a new hobby or a new pity, and they said about her that she adores dogs and is always ready to lend money - and listening to petty rumors, she felt like in childhood, during that game when you leave the room, and others invent various opinions about you. And among the players, among those to whom she came out after being in the next room (where you sit, waiting to be called, and honestly hum something, so as not to overhear, or open a random book, and, like a released spring, it jumps out a piece of a novel, the end of an incomprehensible conversation), among these people, whose opinion it was necessary to guess, there was now a man, rather silent, heavy on his feet, completely unknown what he thought about her.

The official was touchy and tortured, and ate diabetic bread, and probably received a meager salary, was married, and the child had a rash all over his body. He attached cosmic significance to a piece of paper that they didn’t have and had to get, the whole world rested on this piece of paper and hopelessly crumbled into dust if a person was deprived of it. Moreover, it turned out that the Luzhins could not receive it before the monstrous deadlines, millennia of despair and emptiness had expired, and only by writing petitions they were allowed to alleviate this worldly sorrow.

1930

From my youth - I left Russia at the age of 19 - my political views remain strict and unchanged, like an old gray rock. They are classical, almost to the point of banality. Freedom of speech, freedom of art. The social or economic structure of an ideal state interests me little. My desires are very modest. Portraits of the head of state should not exceed the size of a postage stamp. No torture, no executions.

Five or six such streets, and the farther from the sea, the cheaper, as if the sea is a stage, and rows of houses are rows in a theater, armchairs, chairs, and even standing places.

my golden sadness!

Human life as a commentary on an esoteric unfinished poem.

Our close friendship was at that highest, exclusively intellectual level, where a person rests from emotional sorrows, and does not share them.

My God died young. Worship I found Degrading and the evidence unconvincing. The free don't need God - but was I free?