Quote #25

If I say that Nabokov, who was educated in England... turns out to be a master of English prose - the most extraordinary phenomenon of the kind since Conrad - this is likely to sound incredible. If I say that Nabokov is something like Proust, something like Franz Kafka, and, probably something like Gogol, I shall suggest an imitative patchwork, where Nabokov is as completely himself as any of these others - a man with a unique sensibility and a unique story to tell.

More from Vladimir Nabokov

  1. Oh, 'impressed' is not the right word! Treading the soil of the moon gives one, I imagine (or rather my projected self imagines), the most …
  2. Lolita is a fine book, a distinguished book - all right then - a great book.
  3. Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their p…
  4. Lolita is pornography, and we do not plan to review it.
  5. To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase 'sincere and simple' - 'Flaubert wri…
  6. The political barbarism of the century made him an exile, a wanderer, a Hotelmensch, not only from his Russian homeland but from the matchl…
  7. To be quite candid - and what I am going to say now is something I have never said before, and I hope that it provokes a salutory chill - I…
  8. Lolita is one of our finest American novels, a triumph of style and vision, an unforgettable work, Nabokov's best (though not most characte…

All Vladimir Nabokov quotes