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Vladimir Nabokov Quotes about Heart

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Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart,

Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed—then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.

Vladimir Nabokov
Real, Taken, Heart

My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.

Vladimir Nabokov
Heart, Speak English, Mind

My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.

Vladimir Nabokov
Heart, Hysterical, Organs
Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.142, Hamilton Books

Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love - from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter- to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behaviour of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time.

Vladimir Nabokov
Heart, Thinking, Drawing
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1951). “Speak, memory: a memoir”

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

In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood.

Vladimir Nabokov
Heart, Blood, Rainbow
Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.69, Hamilton Books

I should allow only my heart to have imagination; and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's personal truth.

Vladimir Nabokov
Memories, Heart, Sunset

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle.

Vladimir Nabokov
Wise, Book, Heart
Vladimir Nabokov (2017). “Lectures on Literature”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.

Vladimir Nabokov
Heart, Broke, My Heart
Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.154, Hamilton Books

Have you ever happened, reader, to feel that subtle sorrow of parting with an unloved abode? The heart does not break, as it does in parting with dear objects. The humid gaze does not wander around holding back a tear, as if it wished to carry away in it a trembling reflection of the abandoned spot; but in the best corner of our hearts we feel pity for the things which we did not bring to life with our breath, which we hardly noticed and are now leaving forever. This already dead iventory will not be resurrected in one's memory.

Vladimir Nabokov
Memories, Heart, Reflection
Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Scammell (1963). “The gift”

She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward first the scepter of my passion.

Vladimir Nabokov
Pain, Passion, Heart
Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.6, Hamilton Books

Ada girl, adored girl, [...] I'm a radiant void. I'm convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended.

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

My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.

Vladimir Nabokov
Heart, Sea, Kidneys
Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.90, Hamilton Books

We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break.

Vladimir Nabokov
Heart, Numbers, Events
Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Lolita”, p.163, Penguin UK

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