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Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Vladimir Nabokov
Age: 77 †
Born: 1899
Born: January 1
Died: 1977
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Chess Composer
Chess Player
Journalist
Lepidopterist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
St. Petersburg
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Vladimir Sirin
Vl. Sirin
Wladimir Nabokoff-Sirin
V. Sirin
Completely
Nature
Past
Nothing
Revives
Revive
Associated
Scent
Smell
More quotes by 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.
Vladimir Nabokov
The compensation for a death sentence is the knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.
Vladimir Nabokov
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
Vladimir Nabokov
Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.
Vladimir Nabokov
No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.
Vladimir Nabokov
I have never seen a more lucid, more lonely, better balanced mad mind than mine.
Vladimir Nabokov
In reading, one should notice and fondle details.
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Literature was not born the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.
Vladimir Nabokov
While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
Vladimir Nabokov
Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
Vladimir Nabokov
All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.
Vladimir Nabokov
Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile.
Vladimir Nabokov
Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
Vladimir Nabokov
A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.
Vladimir Nabokov
Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped.
Vladimir Nabokov
if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
Vladimir Nabokov
I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.
Vladimir Nabokov
We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
Vladimir Nabokov
Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
Vladimir Nabokov
