Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

Old age likes to dwell in the recollections of the past, and, mistaking, the speedy march of years, often is inclined to take the prudence of the winter time for a fat wisdom of, midsummer days. Manhood is bent to the passing cares of the passing moment, and holds so closely to his eyes the sheet of, "to-day," that it screens the "to-morrow" from his sight.

Traditionally, photography is supposed to capture an event that has passed; but that is not what I'm looking for. Photography brings the past into the present when you look at it.

I only remember the future.

When you are in the future, the past looks different.

Time is something that interests me a whole lot - past and present, and how the past appears as people change.

Our memory is and always will be as good as time travel gets, and in the meantime time will do the travelling for us.

Whenever we're having a great time, we're already anticipating the day when we will remember this great time. Many of us live in that unreal area between the past, the present, and the future.

Wishes are recollections coming from the future.

You, yesterday, did the usual things, just as any day, You don't know if it's worth remembering. You would prefer to remember, there lying in the half-darkness of the bedroom, not what has happened already but what is going to happen. In your half-darkness your eyes would prefer to look ahead, not behind, and they do not know how to foresee the past.

It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.

The past is always triple-A. We can all remember what the past was. But if we try to make the future triple-A, we have no future. The future is always single-B.

The swiftness of time is infinite, as is still more evident when we look back on the past.

That whole day [ of the space flight] is very vividly impressed on my memory because it was such a new experience. We hadn't done that before. And then I've recalled it so often since then I think that it's a - it's remained very vivid over the past 50 years, seems to me like about a week or two instead of 50 years.

It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.

For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment

The future is always here in the past

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

Sweet childish days, that were as long, As twenty days are now.

We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!

I didn't dare think of the future; the past was still happening.

'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable