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I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

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
Little
Would
Expressed
Express
Expression
Known
Knowledge
Words
Littles

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Dear Jesus, do something.
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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.
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There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Although I do not care for the slogan art for art's sake, there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.
Vladimir Nabokov
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You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.
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Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? Is that a crime? I countered, and they all laughed.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire.
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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Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
Vladimir Nabokov
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for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.
Vladimir Nabokov
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You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Vladimir Nabokov
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To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The lost glove is happy.
Vladimir Nabokov