A List of Famous Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.

Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as nymphets.

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.

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

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra... these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known... this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.