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Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
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
Satire
Lesson
Lessons
Game
Games
Parody
More quotes by 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.
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
The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
Vladimir Nabokov
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov
Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.
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
Dear Jesus, do something.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.
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
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.
Vladimir Nabokov
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
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
Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
Vladimir Nabokov
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
Vladimir Nabokov
...for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.
Vladimir Nabokov
You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.
Vladimir Nabokov
We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
Vladimir Nabokov
The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.
Vladimir Nabokov
