"Pnin" Quotes

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed to be aware of it.

Life invariably takes place in an idiom not of our choosing.

Sorrow and solitude seemed to be the lot of all Russians, and there was some comfort in the general nature of his predicament.

Nabokov...the name suggested some exiled member of a royal house of letters.

For in his friendships he was capable not only of genuine faithfulness but also of such zeal and diabolical inventiveness in lying about and betraying his rivals as might have amused Lord Rochester or Regency Buck.

In his work, in his life, in his loves, in his own mind, he was forever asking a question, and the response he would get was not an answer but another question.

Pnin disliked conflict and avoided it when he could.

Even when the woman was in a hospital bed, a few feet away from him, about to undergo an operation that might eventually leave her alive and well...older, with some of her energy and strength gone, but alive and well and able to enjoy her life...even then he did not like her.

It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

The past is like a new coat of paint. It dries quickly, conceals completely, but does nothing for the underlying structure.