Vladimir Nabokov Quotes About Birds

Quotes about: Birds

• Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Sorry, Real, Heart

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (2008). “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight”, p.32, New Directions Publishing

• Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Bird, Fool, Easy

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Despair”, p.104, Penguin UK

• 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

  Glasses, Two, House

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “Pnin”, p.76, Vintage

• - Might it console you to know that I expect nothing but torture from her return? That I regard you as a bird of paradise? She shook her head. - That my admiration for you is painfully strong? - I want Van – she cried – and not intangible admiration. - Intangible? You goose. You my gauge it, you may brush it once very lightly with the knuckles of you gloved hand. I said knuckles. I said once. That will do. I can't kiss you. Not even your burning face. Good-bye, pet. Tell Edmond to take a nap after he returns. I shall need him at two in the morning.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Morning, Strong, Kissing

• That swimming, sloping, elusive something about the dark-bluish tint of the iris which seemed still to retain the shadows it had absorbed of ancient, fabulous forests where there were more birds than tigers and more fruit than thorns, and where, in some dappled depth, man's mind had been born.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Swimming, Dark, Men

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1951). “Speak, Memory: A Memoir”

• At a very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Eggs, Bird, Development

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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