Vera Nabokov Quotes

It's pouring, the trees are getting greener before my eyes, I love you. A little over three weeks left. I'm almost afraid of the intensity of that happiness. ~ Vera Nabokov

That is his head, containing a brain of a different brand than that of the synthetic jellies preserved in the skulls around him ~ Vladimir Nabokov

To each, or about each, of his colleagues he had said at one time or other, something ... something impossible to recall in this or that case and difficult to define in general terms
some careless bright and harsh trifle that had grazed a stretch of raw flesh. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I do make a good ragu pasta, which everyone seems to like. Or that could be just me talking; who knows what they really think. I actually stole the recipe from my older sister Vera, who also loves to cook. I took all my recipes from her. ~ Taissa Farmiga

It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men's attitude to women, and in women's attitude to themselves. ~ Vera Brittain

I grew up in a Ukrainian Catholic-turned-Christian household, and that is my family's faith. ~ Vera Farmiga

I had possessed her - and she never knew it. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Luis hopes for heaven.
Keller fears hell.
Vera fears only death, and that because he takes such pleasure in life. ~ Don Winslow

Just because you're from a city ten miles outside of St. Paul. It doesn't mean you don't read magazines, or the incredible Internet, and what's going on in the world. I never, ever take a client, or women, for granted. ~ Vera Wang

I've done TV, but never where you're given this much time to live with a character, to study the tone and hone it and repair stuff, to go back and watch old episodes and go, "Oh no, that's a misstep. That's a victory. I should do more of that, less of that." ~ Vera Farmiga

Frightened people try to defend themselves by accusing others of their own motives. ~ Vera Caspary

Editing is not a part of the filmmaking process I've ever been privy to as an actress. ~ Vera Farmiga

How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words! ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I think that whatever nationality you are, you should be treated equally, otherwise you don't have equality. ~ Philip Vera Cruz

If I dwell at some length on the tremors and gropings of that distant night, it is because I insist upon proving that I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel. The gentle and dreamy regions through which I crept were the patrimonies of poets-not crime's prowling ground. Had I reached my goal, my ecstasy would have been all softness, a case of internal combustion of which she would hardly have felt the heat, even if she were wide awake. But I still hoped she might gradually be engulfed in a completeness of stupor that would allow me to taste more than a glimmer of her. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I'm part wood nymph. I require mountains and warm, dense patches of moss to thrive. ~ Vera Farmiga

The idea of God was invented in the small hours of history by a scam who had genius; it somehow reeks too much of humanity, that idea, to make its azure origin plausible ... ~ Vladimir Nabokov

There are, however, at least two varieties of imagination in the reader's case. So let us see which one of the two is the right one to use in reading a book. First, there is the comparatively lowly kind which turns for support to the simple emotions and is of a definitely personal nature ... This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use.
So what is the authentic instrument to be used by the reader? It is impersonal imagination and artistic delight. What should be established, I think, is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader's mind and the author's mind. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say that are important - it's what exists between the lines. What I'm compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken. ~ Vera Farmiga

I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls ... There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The only consciousness that persists in the hereafter is the consciousness of pain. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

To her he would surrender the remnants of himself at the first trumpet blast of destiny. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Clarissa remembered why she didn't like him, he was astucious, an ambiguous villain in a gentleman's three piece suit. ~ Vera Jane Cook

Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing ... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

When you come to any town
And one comes to any town very late
When you come very late to any town
In case that town happens to be Valjevo
Where I also came
You'll come by the path you had to come by
Which didn't exist before you
But was born with you
For you to go by your path
And meet her whom you must meet
On the path you must go by
Who was your life
Even before you met her
Or knew that she existed
Both her and the town to which you came.
*****
Until she comes into your life
And there forever remains
She who started towards you
From a great distance
From somewhere in the Russian Jerusalem
From the Caucasus from Pyatigorsk
Where she had never been
And her name was what it was
For instance Vera Pavlodoljska
And looked the way she looked
The way no one on earth looks anymore.
*****
That will be the only town
Where you've always been
And as soon as you heard her name
And before you met her
You always knew her
And already loved her for centuries.
When you come to any town
And one comes to any town very late
When you come very late to any town
In case that town happens to be Valjevo
You will come stepping to a double echo
Yours and the clatter of another
Who travels with you
And whose voice blows in the wind
On an unusual day for that time of year
So even you won't be ~ Matija Bećković

On Translating Eugene Onegin


1
What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.


2
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task--a poet's patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Actually, observed Lucette, wiping the long envelope which a drop of soda had stained,- Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

One sin seldom mentioned is that of killing time. ~ Vera Nazarian

Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow. ~ Vera Nazarian

Sometimes music helps. If I feel that it's bogus, I'll literally just call myself out on camera and say that it's dishonest. You do whatever it takes. ~ Vera Farmiga

He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

With a heavy heart I left the house and walked through the spotted blaze of the sun to my car. Two other cars were parked on both sides of it, and I had some trouble squeezing out. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

As far as I know, Vera Miles had a terrible time with Hitchcock, and she wanted to get out of the contract. He didn't let her. She did 'Psycho,' and I believe, if you look at 'Psycho,' there isn't one close up of Vera, not one. After that, she would never even speak about him to anyone. ~ Tippi Hedren

The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain. She wanted to be a nurse in some famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night - every night, every night - the moment I feigned sleep. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I have journeyed back in thought
with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went
to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits. Short of suicide I have tried everything. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Several passages induced the shiver of aesthetic bliss in my spine that Nabokov famously described as the indicator of good and true writing. The whole thing is by turns hilarious and hilariously sad, artfully pin-holed with melancholy (my favorite drink)… Empty the Sun is an impressive achievement, as well as an excellent and I believe as yet unused name for a rock band. ~ James Greer

No free man needs a God; but was I free? ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

If there is anything of which I am certain in life it is that I shall never exchange the liberty of my exile for the vile parody of home. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

She looked into space a lot, didn't say much, and kissed my father when midnight came, as if she were punching a time card. ~ A.S. King

Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors; the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

It is impossible," I concluded, "to find any satisfaction in the thought of 25,000 slaughtered Germans, left to mutilation and decay; the destruction of men as though beasts, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilization. ~ Vera Brittain

A little downy girl still wearing poppies
still eating popcorn in the colored gloam
where tawny Indians took paid croppers
because you stole her
from her wax-browed and dignified protector
spitting into his heavy-lidded eye
ripping his flavid toga and at dawn
leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort
the awfulness of love and violets
remorse despair while you
took a dull doll to pieces
and threw its head away
because of all you did
because of all I did not
you have to die ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with! ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. ~ Vladimir Nabokov