Best 488 quotes of Vladimir Nabokov on MyQuotes

Vladimir Nabokov

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    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.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what I'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already, that in fact I would see them plainly if I looked closer, but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A good laugh is the best pesticide.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    All colors made me happy: even gray. My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    All great novels are great fairy tales.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake", there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    An active and creative reader is a re-reader.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    ...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me-my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing-yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy-yes, happy!

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? Is that a crime? I countered, and they all laughed.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    At a very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    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.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as nymphets.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

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    Vladimir Nabokov

    Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.