Pnin Quotes

A special danger area in Pnin's case was the English language. Except for such not very helpful odds and ends as "the rest is silence/' "nevermore," "weekend," "who's who," and a few ordinary words...

During the eight years Pnin had taught at Waindell College he had changed his lodgings— for one reason or another, mainly sonic—about every semester. The accumulation of consecutive rooms in hi...

He did not bother to puzzle out why exactly Liza had felt the urgent need to see him on her way back from visiting St. Bartholomew's, the preparatory school near Boston that her son would go to nex...

He found himself in a damp, green, purplish park, of the formal and funereal type, with the stress laid on somber rhododendrons, glossy laurels, sprayed shade trees and closely clipped lawns; and h...

He was beloved not for any essential ability but for those unforgettable digressions of his, when he would remove his glasses to beam at the past while massaging the lenses of the present. Nostalgi...

Prior to the nineteen-forties, during the staid European era of his life, he had always worn long underwear, its terminals tucked into the tops of neat silk socks, which were clocked, soberly color...

All this underwent a change in the heady atmosphere of the New World. Nowadays, at fifty-two, he was crazy about sun-bathing, wore sport shirts and slacks, and when crossing his legs would carefull...

From then on to the end of the voyage that had turned from green and silver to a uniform gray, Pnin busied himself overtly with his English-language manuals, and although immutably meek with Liza,...