Vladimir Nabokov Quotes About Torture

Quotes about: Torture

• Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Betrayal, Sleep, Humanity

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1989). “Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited”

• ...for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Years, Land, House

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1969). “Ada: or, Ardor, a family chronicle”, McGraw-Hill Companies

• Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Beautiful, Attractive, Torture

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1996). “Novels, 1969-1974”

• - 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

• There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Hate, Years, Squad

• The social or economic structure of the ideal state is of little concern to me. My desires are modest. Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size. No torture and no executions. No music, except coming through earphones, or played in theaters. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of art.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Government, Freedom Of Speech

  Interview with Alvin Toffler, reprints.longform.org. January 1964.

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