Vladimir Nabokov Quotes - Page 10

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• I could also distinguish the glint of a special puddle (the one Krug had somehow perceived through the layer of his own life), an oblong puddle invariably acquiring the same form after every shower because of the constant spatulate shape of a depression in the ground. Possibly something of the kind may be said to occur in regard to the imprint we leave in the intimate texture of space. Twang. A good night for nothing.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Depression, Good Night, Space

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Bend Sinister”, p.205, Penguin UK

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• Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Demand, Chess

  Vladimir Nabokov (2015). “Letters to V??ra”, p.531, Knopf

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• My answer to your question'Does the writer have a social responsibility?' is NO.You owe me ten cents, sir.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Responsibility, Answers, Doe

  Letter to an editor who had offered him $200 for 2,000 words. Quoted by Eleanor Blau in the NewYork Times, 24 Aug1989.

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• Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Sheep, Reader

  "Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977".

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• There is only one school of literature - that of talent.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  School, Literature, Talent

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• We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Fate

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.117, Vintage

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• There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, People, Survival

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “Pale Fire”, p.34, Vintage

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• Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Action, Cliche, Novel

  Vladimir Nabokov (2010). “Lolita”, p.313, Vintage

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• I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Reflection, Hands, Bored

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• Do those clowns really believe what they teach?

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Believe, Clown, Teach

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “Pale Fire”, p.249, Vintage

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• I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come out of him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. ... I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Baby, Art, Husband

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• Why do those people guess so much and shave so little, and are so disdainful of hearing aids?

  Vladimir Nabokov

  People, Littles, Hearing

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.152, Hamilton Books

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• I think she always nursed a small mad hope.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Thinking, Nurse, Mad

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “Pale Fire”, p.41, Vintage

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• It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Journey, Hiking, Fame

  36 Copy quote

• If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Life, Country, Butterfly

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• In reading, one should notice and fondle details.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, Reading, Details

  Vladimir Nabokov (2017). “Lectures on Literature”, p.1, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Lasts, Last Words, Commentators

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.56, Vintage

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• Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Life Is Short, Car, Twenties

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.371, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Summer, Mother, Memories

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.3, Hamilton Books

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• You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.78, Hamilton Books

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• When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, Hopeful, Bangs

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Airplane, Aphorism, Aeroplanes

  1937 The Gift, ch.1.

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• I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Dream, Real, People

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Invitation to a Beheading”, p.29, Penguin UK

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• Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Believe, Psychology, Greek

  "Strong Opinions" by Vladimir Nabokov, (p. 66), 1973.

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• But in my arms she was always Lolita.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Arms, Sock

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.3, Hamilton Books

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