Bend Sinister Quotes

“Ink, a Drug.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“The square root of I is I.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Do all people have that? A face, a phrase, a landscape, an air bubble from the past suddenly floating up as if released by the head warden's child from a cell in the brain while the mind is at work on some totally different matter? Something of the sort also occurs just before falling asleep when what you think you are thinking is not at all what you think. Or two parallel passenger trains of thought, one overtaking the other.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Nothing on earth really matters, there is nothing to fear, and death is but a question of style, a mere literary device, a musical resolution.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“anyone can create the future but only a wise man can create the past”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“He was one of those persons whom one loves not because of some lustrous streak of talent (this retired businessman possessed none), but because every moment spent with them fits exactly the gauge of one's life. There are friendships like circuses, waterfalls, libraries; there are others comparable to old dressing gowns. You found nothing especially attractive about Maximov's mind if you took it apart: his ideas were conservative, his tastes undistinguished: but somehow or other these dull components formed a wonderfully comfortable and harmonious whole.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“And what agony, thought Krug the thinker, to love so madly a little creature, formed in some mysterious fashion (even more mysterious to us than it had been to the very first thinkers in their pale olive gloves) by the fusion of two mysteries, or rather two sets of a trillion of mysteries each; formed by a fusion which is, at the same time, a matter of choice and a matter of chance and a matter of pure enchantment; thus formed and then permitted to accumulate trillions of its own mysteries; the whole suffused with consciousness, which is the only real thing in the world and the greatest mystery of all.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Nature had once produced an Englishman whose domed head had been a hive of words; a man who had only to breathe on any particle of his stupendous vocabulary to have that particle live and expand and throw out tremulous tentacles until it became a complex image with a pulsing brain and correlated limbs. Three centuries later, another man, in another country, was trying to render these rhythms and metaphors in a different tongue. This process entailed a prodigious amount of labour, for the necessity of which no real reason could be given. It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual T) growing in a certain land and casting its own unique shadow on the green and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree as the translator's inspiration and language were unlike those of the original author, but which, by means of ingenious combination of parts, light effects, breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly similar to that of Individual T - the same outline, changing in the same manner, with the same double and single spots of sun rippling in the same position, at the same hour of the day. From a practical point of view, such a waste of time and material (those headaches, those midnight triumphs that turn out to be disasters in the sober light of morning!) was almost criminally absurd, since the greatest masterpiece of imitation presupposed a voluntary limitation of thought, in submission to another man's genius.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“We have imagined that a white hospital train with a white Diesel engine has taken you through many a tunnel to a mountainous country by the sea. You are getting well there. But you cannot write because your fingers are so very weak. Moonbeams cannot hold even a white pencil. The picture is pretty, but how long can it stay on the screen? We expect the next slide, but the magic-lantern man has none left. Shall we let the theme of a long separation expand till it breaks into tears? Shall we say (daintily handling the disinfected white symbols) that the train is Death and the nursing home Paradise? Or shall we leave the picture to fade by itself, to mingle with other fading impressions? But we want to write letters to you even if you cannot answer. Shall we suffer the slow wobbly scrawl (we can manage our name and two or three words of greeting) to work its conscientious and unnecessary way across a post card which will never be mailed? Are not these problems so hard to solve because my own mind is not made up yet in regard to your death? My intelligence does not accept the transformation of physical discontinuity into the permanent continuity of a nonphysical element escaping the obvious law, nor can it accept the inanity of accumulating incalculable treasures of thought and sensation, and thought-behind-thought and sensation-behind-sensation, to lose them all at once and forever in a fit of black nausea followed by infinite nothingness. Unquote.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“I esteem my colleagues as I do my own self, I esteem them for two things: because they are able to find perfect felicity in specialized knowledge and because they are not apt to commit physical murder.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Old Azureus's manner of welcoming people was a silent rhapsody. Ecstatically beaming, slowly, tenderly, he would take your hand between his soft palms, hold it thus as if it were a long sought treasure or a sparrow all fluff and heart, in moist silence, peering at you the while with his beaming wrinkles rather than with his eyes, and then, very slowly, the silvery smile would start to dissolve, the tender old hands would gradually release their hold, a blank expression replace the fervent light of his pale fragile face, and he would leave you as if he had made a mistake, as if after all you were not the loved one - the loved one whom, the next moment, he would espy in another corner, and again the smile would dawn, again the hands would enfold the sparrow, again it would all dissolve.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“He had liked her enormously, and he loved Krug with the same passion that a big sleek long-flewed hound feels for the high-booted hunter who reeks of the marsh as he leans towards the red fire. Krug could take aim at a flock of the most popular and sublime human thoughts and bring down a wild goose any time. But he could not kill death.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Unfortunately his urge to write had suddenly petered out and he did not know what to do with himself. He was not sleepy having slept after dinner. The brandy only added to the nuisance. He was a big heavy man of the hairy sort with a somewhat Beethovenlike face. He had lost his wife in November. He had taught philosophy. He was exceedingly virile. His name was Adam Krug.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“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, Bend Sinister

“Paduk and all the rest wrote on steadily, but Krug's failure was complete, a baffling and hideous disaster, for he had been busy becoming an elderly man instead of learning the simple but now unobtainable passages which they, mere boys, had memorized.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“- Брось старина, не валяй дурака. Подпиши эту гадость, - сказал Хедрон, склоняясь над Кругом и опуская кулак с трубкой ему на плечо. - Много ли она значит, в конце-то концов? Поставь свою коммерчески ценную закорючку. Брось! Никто не тронет наших кругов, - но где-то же нужно нам их рисовать.
- Не в грязи, сэр, не в грязи, - сказал Круг, улыбнувшись первой за этот вечер улыбкой.
- Да ну, не будь надутым педантом, - сказал Хедрон. Зачем тебе нужно, чтобы я чувствовал себя так неловко? Я подписал, и мои боги не шелохнулись.
Не поднимая глаз, Круг поднял руку и тронул твидовый рукав Хедрона.
-Все в порядке, - сказал он. - Пока ты рисуешь свои круги и показываешь моему мальчику фокусы, черта ли мне в твоей морали.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Аварийна спирачка на времето. Какъвто и да е настоящият момент, аз съм го задържал. Твърде късно. Придържайки се към този прост метод, през нашите, колко бяха, дванайсет, дванайсет години и три месеца съвместен живот би следвало да съм обездвижил стотици хиляди такива мигновения, заплащайки може би умопомрачителни глоби, но съм успявал да спра влака. Кажи. Защо го направи? – би попитал облещеният кондуктор. Защото ми харесваше гледката. Защото исках да спра тези бягащи дървета и пътечката, която се виеше между тях. Като настъпя нейната изплъзваща се опашка. Това, което я сполетя, вероятно нямаше да ѝ се случаи, ако бях имал навика да спирам едно или друго късче от нашия съвместен живот, профилактично, пророчески, да позволявам на този или онзи миг да поеме спокойно дъх и да си почине. Да укротявам времето. Да дам отдих на пулса ѝ. Да се грижа за живота, живота – нашия пациент.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Професоре, това е само предложение – изрече телефонът. – Към държавния глава обикновено не се обръщат с dragotzennyi.
- А сега да ти кажа аз. Идват хората при мен и питат. Защо бездейства този достоен и интелигентен човек? Защо не служи той на държавата? И аз отговарям: не знам. И те също като мен правят какви ли не предположения.
- Кои са те? – сухо попита Круг.
- Приятели, приятели на закона, приятели на законодателя. И селските братства. И градските клубове. И великите масонски ложи. Защо е така, поради каква причина този човек не е с нас? Аз само повтарям техните въпроси.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Non può esservi alcuna sottomissione – perché il fatto stesso che parliamo di questi argomenti indica che vi è curiosità, e la curiosità è insubordinazione nella forma più pura.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“He yielded with what pleasure there was in the act, to the soft warm pressure of tears. The sense of relief did not last, for as soon as he let them flow they became atrociously hot and abundant so as to interfere with his eyesight and respiration. He walked down the cobbled Omigod Lane towards the embankment. Tried clearing his throat but it merely led to another gasping sob. He was sorry now he had yielded to that temptation for he could not stop yielding and the throbbing man in him was soaked. As usual he discriminated between the throbbing one and the one that looked on: looked on with concern, with sympathy , with a sigh, or with bland suprise.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“He had never indulged in the search for the True Substance, the One, the Absolute, the Diamond suspended from the Christmas tree of the Cosmos. He had always felt the faint ridicule of a finite mind peering at iridescence of the invisible through the prison bars of integers . And even if the Thing could be caught, why would he, or anyone else for that matter, wish the phenomenon to lose its curls, its mask, its mirror, and become the bald noumenon?”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“I had never touched this particular knob before and shall never find it again. This moment of conscious contact holds a drop of solace. The emergency brake of time. Whatever the present moment is, I have stopped it. Too late. In the course of our, let me see, twelve, twelve and three months of life together, I ought to have immobilized by this simple method millions of moments; paying perhaps terrific fines, but stopping the train. Say why did you do it? the popeyed conductor might ask. Because I liked the view. Because I wanted to stop these speedy trees and the path twisting between them. By stepping on it's receding tail. What happened to her would perhaps not have happened, had I been in the habit of stopping this or that bit of our common life, prophylactically, prophetically, letting this or that moment rest and breath in peace. Taming time. Giving her pulse respite. Pampering life, life - our patient.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“... смерть — это всего лишь вопрос стиля, простой литературный прием, разрешение музыкальной темы.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“... все вообще люди состоят из одних и тех же двадцати пяти букв, только по-разному смешанных.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“... но где мифология растянула крепкие цирковые сети, чтобы мышление в его мешковатом трико не свернуло себе старой шеи, а отпрыгнуло — прыг-скок — и в который раз соскочило на эту пропитанную мочой арену и после короткой пробежки с полупируэтом посередине показало предельную простоту небес — амфороносным жестом акробата, простодушным всплеском рук, вызывающим дождичек аплодисментов, под которым оно прохаживается туда-сюда, вновь обретая мужественность осанки, ловит маленький синий платочек, который его мускулистая подруга-летунья вытаскивает, завершив свои экзерсисы, из глубин горячей, вздымающейся груди, — вздымающейся гораздо сильнее, чем уверяет ее улыбка, — и бросает ему, чтобы оно осушило ладони ноющих, слабеющих рук.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

“Oh, ‘philosophy.’ You know. When you try to imagine a mirok [small pink potato] without the least reference to any you have eaten or will eat.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister