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The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
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
Explain
Wave
Sea
Cannot
Whole
Breaking
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
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Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head.
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A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.
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Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.
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I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.
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My own ultraviolet darling. Lolita
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Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
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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.
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Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.
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do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
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The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious it has been set free.
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My God died young. Theolatry i found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God but was I free?
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I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.
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Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
Vladimir Nabokov
A good laugh is the best pesticide.
Vladimir Nabokov
And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov
Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
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At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.
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Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
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