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A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.

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
Novelists
Mortals
Fully
Surface
Present
Past
Home
Ooze
Like
Novelist

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
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I think it is all a matter of love.
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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.
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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.
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The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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
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A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.
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I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!
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Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that offensive is frequently but a synonym for unusual and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I don't think in any language. I think in images.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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
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Curiously enough, one cannot read a book one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
Vladimir Nabokov
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All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Dear Jesus, do something.
Vladimir Nabokov