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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
Mortals
Fully
Surface
Present
Past
Home
Ooze
Like
Novelist
Novelists
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
Vladimir Nabokov
…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.
Vladimir Nabokov
Don't touch me I'll die if you touch me.
Vladimir Nabokov
It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
Vladimir Nabokov
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
Vladimir Nabokov
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
Vladimir Nabokov
It is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age-strange, strange are the mishaps of memory.
Vladimir Nabokov
As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.
Vladimir Nabokov
Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.
Vladimir Nabokov
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
A good laugh is the best pesticide.
Vladimir Nabokov
Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
Vladimir Nabokov
I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.
Vladimir Nabokov
I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
Vladimir Nabokov
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
Vladimir Nabokov
