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Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
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
Passion
Literature
Known
Two
Hygiene
Men
Butterflies
Sweetest
Butterfly
Passions
More quotes by 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.
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
In reading, one should notice and fondle details.
Vladimir Nabokov
Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.
Vladimir Nabokov
The social or economic structure of the ideal state is of little concern to me. My desires are modest. Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size. No torture and no executions. No music, except coming through earphones, or played in theaters. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of art.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.
Vladimir Nabokov
My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
Vladimir Nabokov
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
Vladimir Nabokov
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.
Vladimir Nabokov
Style and Structure are the essence of a book great ideas are hogwash.
Vladimir Nabokov
Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
My answer to your question'Does the writer have a social responsibility?' is NO.You owe me ten cents, sir.
Vladimir Nabokov
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Vladimir Nabokov
Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
Vladimir Nabokov
do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
Vladimir Nabokov
I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.
Vladimir Nabokov
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
Vladimir Nabokov
