Famous quotes containing the word nabokov:
“Because of the unusual remoteness of Russia, and because of nostalgia’s remaining throughout one’s life an insane companion, with whose heartrending oddities one is accustomed to put up in public, I feel no embarrassment in confessing to the sentimental stab of attachment to my first book.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“... the compensation for a death sentence is knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Do you know how poetry started? I always think that it started when a cave boy came running back to the cave, through the tall grass, shouting as he ran, “Wolf, wolf,” and there was no wolf. His baboon-like parents, great sticklers for the truth, gave him a hiding, no doubt, but poetry had been born—the tall story had been born in the tall grass.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)