Jay > Jay's Quotes

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you―on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck―even then. And afterwards―perhaps most of all afterwards―I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I, and turn ourselves in such a way that we form one pattern, and solve the puzzle: draw a line from point A to point B... without looking, or, without lifting the pencil... or in some other way... we shall connect the points, draw the line, and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn. If they do this kind of thing to me every morning, they will get me trained and I shall become quite wooden.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

“Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness , dear, my happiness will remain,in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal's black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters, 1940-1977

“When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Commonsense has trampled down many a gentle genius whose eyes had delighted in a too early moonbeam of some too early truth; commonsense has back-kicked dirt at the loveliest of queer paintings because a blue tree seemed madness to its well-meaning hoof; commonsense has prompted ugly but strong nations to crush their fair but frail neighbors the moment a gap in history offered a chance that it would have been ridiculous not to exploit.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Life itself is a quotation.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges: Interviews by Roberto Alifano 1981-1983

“خواب دیدم که روی کف زمین زندانم یک دانه شن است. بی‌تفاوت، دوباره خوابیدم و خواب دیدم که بیدار شده‌ام و دو دانه شن هست. دوباره خوابیدم و خواب دیدم که دانه‌های شن سه تا هستند. زیاد شدند تا اینکه زندان را پر کردند و من زیر این نیم‌کره‌ی شنی میمردم. فهمیدم که دارم خواب میبینم و با کوشش فراوان بیدار شدم. بیدار شدنم بیهوده بود: شن خفه‌ام میکرد. کسی بمن گفت: تو در هوشیاری بیدار نشدی؛ بلکه در خوابِ قبلی بیدار شدی. این خواب در درون یک خواب دیگر است و همینطور تا بینهایت؛ که تعداد دانه‌های شن است. راهی که تو باید بازگردی بی‌پایان است. پیش از آنکه واقعاً بیدار شوی، خواهی مرد.
حس کردم که از دست رفته‌ام. شن دهانم را خرد میکرد، ولی فریاد زدم: شنی که در خواب دیده شده است، نمیتواند مرا بکشد و خوابی نیست که در خواب دیگر باشد. یک پرتو نور بیدارم کرد. در ظلمت بالایی یک دایره‌ی نور شکل گرفته بود. دستها و چهره‌ی زندانبان، قرقره، سیم، گوشت و کوزه‌ها را دیدم.
انسان، کم‌کم با شکل سرنوشتش همانند میشود؛ انسان بمرور زمان شرایط خودش میوشد. من بیش از اینکه کاشف رمز یا انتقامجو باشم، بیش از اینکه کاهن خدا باشم، خودم زندانی بودم. از هزارتوی خستگی‌ناپذیر رؤیاها، به زندان سخت همچون خانه‌ی خودم بازگشتم. رطوبتش را دعا کردم؛ ببرش را دعا کردم؛ پنجره‌ی زیرزمینی‌اش را دعا کردم؛ بدن پیر دردآلودم را دعا کردم؛ تاریکی سنگ را دعا کردم.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Until you die .. it's all life.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“No art is possible without a dance with death.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Everything about life is a joke. Don't you know that?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"
It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.
This is it: "Nothing.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Oh Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia — what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, 'Somebody up there likes me.' And no longer can a tyrant say, 'God wants this or that to happen, and anyone who doesn't help this or that to happen is against God.' O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!" -The prayer of the Reverend C. Horner Redwine”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“I love you sons of bitches. You’re all I read any more. You're the only ones who’ll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that’ll last for billions of years. You’re the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You're the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“She was a widow, and he stripped himself naked while she went to fetch some of her husband's clothes. But before he could put them on, the police were hammering on the front door with their billy clubs. So the fugitive hid on top of a rafter. When the woman let in the police, though, his oversize testicles hung down in full view."
Trout paused again.
The police asked the woman where the guy was. The woman said she didn't know what guy they were talking about," said Trout. "One of the cops saw the testicles hanging down from a rafter and asked what they were. She said they were Chinese temple bells. He believed her. He said he 'd always wanted to hear Chinese temple bells. "He gave them a whack with his billy club, but there was no sound. So he hit them again, a lot harder, a whole lot harder. Do you know what the guy on the rafter shrieked?" Trout asked me. I said I didn't. "He shrieked, 'TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions

“If you have feelings about reading, you feel the rhythm of prose or of a poem like music. It awakens something in your soul and then of course you study, read, you grow up and you begin to understand the message and that is the first step towards understanding life.”
― Maria Kodama

“Meow” means “woof” in cat.”
― George Carlin