“Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.”
—Vladimir Nabokov, a multilingual Russian novelist, poet and short story writer (1899-1977), cited in Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003. Illustration.
With gratitude to Lapidarium.
I confess, I do not believe in time.
Vladimir Nabokov (Thank you, heartmindspirit & atlelier)
Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.
Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (Beautiful, thank you, liquidnight)
“Life is a great sunrise.
I do not see why death should not be
an even greater one.”
~ Vladimir Nabokov
Wonderful. Thank you Death Deconstructed.
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov (riskywiver)
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. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life.
Vladimir Nabokov (via ratak-monodosico, eelesa)
I became aware of the world’s tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but the shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed upon us and unappreciated.
His struggle with words was usually painful and this for two reasons. One was the common one with writers of his type: the bridging of the abyss lying between expression and thought; the maddening feeling that the right words, the only words are awaiting you on the opposite bank in the misty distance, and the shudderings of the still unclothed thought clamouring for them on this side of the abyss.
Vladimir Nabokov, “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight”
