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No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
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
Character
Chekhov
Pathetic
Emphasis
Author
Characters
Created
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More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading
Vladimir Nabokov
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
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
We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
Vladimir Nabokov
Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
Vladimir Nabokov
I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
Vladimir Nabokov
Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.
Vladimir Nabokov
Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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
Dear Jesus, do something.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.
Vladimir Nabokov
Ada girl, adored girl, [...] I'm a radiant void. I'm convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended.
Vladimir Nabokov
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.
Vladimir Nabokov
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
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
