#vladimir nabokov – @hush-syrup on Tumblr

In a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.

By Vladimir Nabokov

#lit #literature #prose #writing #fiction #literary quote #literary quotes #quote #quotes #nabokov #vladimir nabokov

hush-syrup

The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.

By Vladimir Nabokov

#lit #literature #prose #fiction #writing #writer #writing lessons #words #nabokov #vladimir nabokov

hush-syrup

Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.

From Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

#pnin #literature #novel #fiction #prose #nabokov #vladimir nabokov #lit

hush-syrup reblogged

talesofpassingtime

Sounds have colors, colors have smells. The fire of Lucette’s amber runs through the night of Ada’s odor and ardor, and stops at the threshold of Van’s lavender goat. Ten eager, evil, loving, long fingers belonging to two different young demons caress their helpless bed pet. Ada’s loose black hair accidentally tickles the local curio she holds in her left fist, magnanimously demonstrating her acquisition. Unsigned and un-framed.

From Ada by Vladimir Nabokov (via talesofpassingtime)

#nabokov #ada #Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle #ada or ardor #vladimir nabokov #book #novel #fiction #prose #lit #literature

hush-syrup

She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force of character.

From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

#lit #literature #poem #poet #poetry #pale fire #nobokov #vladimir nabokov

hush-syrup

There was a time in my demented youth when somehow I suspected that the truth about survival after death was known - to every human being: I alone knew nothing, and a great conspiracy of books and people hid the truth from me.

From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

#lit #literature #poem #poet #poetry #novel #nabokov #pale fire #vladimir nabokov

hush-syrup

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by feigned remoteness in the windowpane. I had a brain, five senses (one unique); but otherwise I was a cloutish freak.

From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

#lit #literature #poem #poet #poetry #vladimir nabokov #pale fire #prose #novel

hush-syrup

My picture book was at an early age the painted parchment papering our cage: mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenon the iridule - when, beautiful and strange, in a bright sky above a mountain range one opal cloudlet in an oval form reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm which in a distant valley has been staged - for we are most artistically caged.

From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

I love the fact that Nabokov coined the word “iridule”, which means a rainbow reflected by a cloud. Endless awesomeness.

#lit #literature #poem #poet #poetry #pale fire #vladimir nabokov #nabokov #novel

hush-syrup

My God died young.

From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

#pale fire #vladimir nabokov #Nabokov #lit #literature #poem #poet #poetry #novel

hush-syrup reblogged

talesofpassingtime

I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! And there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it, my little one.

From Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (via talesofpassingtime)

#lit #literature #prose #fiction #lolita #vladimir nabokov #nabokov

hush-syrup reblogged

talesofpassingtime

'To be' means to know one 'has been.' 'Not to be' implies the only 'new' kind of (sham) time: the future. I dismiss it. Life, love, libraries, have no future.

From Ada by Vladimir Nabokov (via talesofpassingtime)

#ada #vladimir nabokov #nabokov #lit #literature #prose

hush-syrup reblogged

fables-of-the-reconstruction-de

Consciousness is a message scribbled in the dark.

From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

#pale fire #vladimir nabokov #lit #literature #prose

hush-syrup reblogged

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness-in a landscape selected at random-is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern-to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.

From Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (via fables-of-the-reconstruction)

#speak memory #lit #literature #prose #vladimir nabokov #nabokov

hush-syrup

I wish someone would notice the tender description of [Lolita’s] helplessness, her pathetic dependence on the monstrous Humbert Humbert , and her heartrending courage all along, culminating in that squalid but essentially pure and healthy marriage, and her letter, and her dog. And that terrible expression on her face when she had been cheated by Humbert Humbert out of some little pleasure that had been promised. They all miss the fact that ‘the horrid little brat’ Lolita is essentially very good indeed—or she would not have straightened out after being crushed so terribly, and found a decent life with poor Dick more to her liking than the other kind.

By Vera Nabokov

#vladimir nabokov #nabokov #lit #literature #lolita #humbert humbert #prose #entropy quotes #vera nabokov

hush-syrup

Take Lolita. This was the story of a twelve-year-old girl who had nowhere to go. Humbert had tried to turn her into his fantasy, into his dead love, and he had destroyed her. The desperate truth of Lolita’s story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual’s life by another. We don’t know what Lolita would have become if Humbert had not engulfed her.

From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

#lolita #humbert humbert #vladimir nabokov #nabokov #lit #literature #prose #azar nafisi #entropy quotes #reading lolita in tehran

hush-syrup

Anonymous asked:

What's your favorite book ever!

Probably Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, followed by Nabokov’s Lolita and Anais Nin’s Diaries.

#answers #personal answers #books #lit #literature #thomas pynchon #the crying of lot 49 #anais nin #lolita #vladimir nabokov

hush-syrup

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: uncurtaining the night, I’d let dark glass hang all the furniture above the grass, and how delightful when a fall of snow covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so as to make chair and bed exactly stand upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

#pale fire #vladimir nabokov #nabokov #lit #literature #poem #poet #poetry #prose