Dear Jesus, do something.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Do all people have that? A face, a phrase, a landscape, an air bubble from the past suddenly floating up as if released by the head warden's child from a cell in the brain while the mind is at work on some totally different matter? Something of the sort also occurs just before falling asleep when what you think you are thinking is not at all what you think. Or two parallel passenger trains of thought, one overtaking the other.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal friends or impersonal peers, while its revilers can only be envious rogues and nonentities.

— Vladimir Nabokov

Everything he said should be followed by a big sic

— Vladimir Nabokov

Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!

— Vladimir Nabokov

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

— Vladimir Nabokov