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Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
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
Funny
Footnotes
Inspirational
Unfinished
Writing
Masterpiece
Life
Obscure
Vast
Series
Motivational
Existence
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
Vladimir Nabokov
I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.
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Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.
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I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.
Vladimir Nabokov
To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena - all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.
Vladimir Nabokov
do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
Vladimir Nabokov
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
Vladimir Nabokov
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Vladimir Nabokov
Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.
Vladimir Nabokov
Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .
Vladimir Nabokov
And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.
Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
I think it is all a matter of love.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
Vladimir Nabokov
Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
Vladimir Nabokov
The future is but the obsolete in reverse.
Vladimir Nabokov
There was no Lo to behold.
Vladimir Nabokov
I confess, I do not believe in time.
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
