Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

I think I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not really aware of that time passing. I don't feel that I'm wasteful with time. But I'm not aware of it passing.

Time is not an absolute reality but an aspect of our consciousness.

The eye of the poet sees less clearly, but sees farther than the eye of the scientist.

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

Time is measured by the quality and not the quanity of sensations it contains.

What is time? If I am not asked, I know; if I am asked, I don't.

My hold on the past and the future is precarious and my possession of my own time is always postponed until a stage when I may fully understand it, yet this stage can never be reached, since it would be one more moment bounded by the horizon of its future, and requiring in its turn, further developments in order to be understood.

I can see time," whispered Mogget, so softly that his words were lost.

CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.

Time did not mean anything to those who had too much of it, but it was even more precious once it was limited.

Besides, animals don’t even have time. Only humans have time. It’s what makes us different.

It's proven that how time moves for you depends on where you are in the universe. It's relative to beings and other places. But on the level of being here on earth, if you are aware in a moment, one second can last a year. And if you are unaware, your whole childhood, your whole life can pass by in six seconds. But it’s also such a thing that you can get lost in.

With age, it really becomes thinking about how time has passed - that's sort of the root of age.

Maybe the more emotions a person experiences in their daily lives, the longer time seems to feel to them. As you get older, you experience fewer new things, and so time seems to go by faster.

I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.

An hour is not merely an hour, it is a vase full of scents and sounds and projects and climates.

Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever?

The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.

These tenses-past, present and future-are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past.

Isn't it fascinating how long a few minutes seem when you are completely alone with not a familiar face in sight?

In an instant, our mind can carry us far away into memories of the past or fantasies about the future. Or we may get caught up in a race against the clock, feeling like there's never enough time. We say things like "Time is flying," "Time is running out," or "There are never enough hours in the day."

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.