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Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
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
Ends
Stopping
Avalanche
Feel
Village
Avalanches
Feels
Behave
Behaves
People
Harm
Jam
Track
Cheated
Feet
Tracks
Happy
Doom
Cowering
Hate
Norm
Unnaturally
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .
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A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
Vladimir Nabokov
while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
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Do not be angry with the rain it simply does not know how to fall upwards.
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Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.
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I think she always nursed a small mad hope.
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Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
Vladimir Nabokov
I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.
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A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle.
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
All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.
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All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.
Vladimir Nabokov
But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
Vladimir Nabokov
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Vladimir Nabokov
Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist.
Vladimir Nabokov
There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
Vladimir Nabokov
My God died young. Theolatry i found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God but was I free?
Vladimir Nabokov
In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood.
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If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.
Vladimir Nabokov