Vladimir Nabokov

"Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one."

"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."

"I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."

"Loneliness is the cantor's voice of the soul."

"Memory can be a tyrant."

"The pages are still warm from the reader's hands."

"Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art."

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

"One cannot love sincerely without respecting the beloved object."

"The most unhappy people, in my experience, are those who are trying to be someone else."

"Talent is a cruel master."

"I speak six languages and I dream in none of them."

"The real prison-house is the self."

"Education is the most beautiful form of bribery."

"A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist."

"Time is a drug. Its abuse is death."

"I like the order in which things happen."

"Genius is an African who dreams up snow."

"Good readers, which means active and constant readers, are creation as much as anything a writer creates."

"Pain is the price we pay for consciousness."

"The man who is not indignant at injustice is a coward and not a man at all."

"I despise the word 'optimism' but I adore the word 'hope'."

"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form."

"My private tragedy is that I have nothing to regret."

"A novelist is a man who invents a story to make a point."

"There is no time for despair in a world of beauty."

"A mask is a face."

"I have always admired the casual way in which anonymous critics refer to me."

"There is no general idea which does not cut out a little of the artist's flesh."

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and imprisonment."