Transparent Things Quotes

“Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“This is, I believe, it: not the crude anguish of physical death but the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“Easy, you know, does it, son.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“All dreams are anagrams of diurnal reality.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“According to my almond-eyed little spy, the great surgeon, may his own liver rot, lied to me when he declared yesterday with a deathhead's grin that the operazione had been perfetta. Well, it had been so in the sense Euler called zero the perfect number. Actually, they ripped me open, cast one horrified look at my decayed fegato, and without touching it sewed me up again.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, though not necessarily rare, traits, all of which he accepted as absurd clues in a clever puzzle.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“and he, Hugh Person....began to undress her in the motels of his mind”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“ 'I shall vomit,' said Hugh, 'if you persist in pestering me with all that odious rot.' ”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“It is comic - but I used to believe that dying persons saw the vanity of things, the futility of fame, passion, art, and so forth. I believed that treasured memories in a dying man's mind dwindled to rainbow wisps; but now I feel just the contrary: my most trivial sentiments and those of all men have acquired gigantic proportions. The entire solar system is but a reflection in the crystal of my (or your) wrist watch. The more I shrivel the bigger I grow. I suppose this is an uncommon phenomenon. Total rejection of all religions ever dreamt up by man and total composure in the face of total death! If I could explain this triple totality in one big book, that book would become no doubt a new bible and its author the founder of a new creed. Fortunately for my self-esteem that book will not be written - not merely because a dying man cannot write books but because that particular one would never express in one flash what can only be understood immediately.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“Mas o amor, dizia ele, era tudo menos credível, a vida real era ridícula, os labregos riam-se do amor.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some "future" events may be likelier than others, O.K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“For a moment he wondered what his wife was doing there, prone on the floor, her fair hair spread as if she were flying. Then he stared at his bashful claws.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“What powerful words, what weapons, are stored up in the mountains, at suitable spots, in special caches of the granite heart, behind painted surfaces of steel made to resemble the mottling of the adjacent rocks.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“A lot of handwringing goes about in the dark of remorse, in the dungeon of the irreparable.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the act of attention might lead to our sinking involuntarily into the history of that object.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“Eis a pessoa que eu quero. Olá, pessoa! Não me ouve.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“Upon leaving that ignoble lavatory, Hugh gently closed the door after him but like a stupid pet it whined and immediately followed him into the room.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“Upon leaving that ignoble lavatory, Hugh gently closed the door after him but like a stupid pet it whined and immediately followed him into the room.”
― Nabokov Vladimir, Transparent Things