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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
Words
Littles
Little
Would
Expressed
Express
Expression
Known
Knowledge

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this: O rainbow-colored gods. . .
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Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
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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.
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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
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My characters are galley slaves.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Pnin slowly walked under solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended the destinies of the quick.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Imagine me I shall not exist if you do not imagine me try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity let's even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.
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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She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.
Vladimir Nabokov
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You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Vladimir Nabokov
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It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Words without experience are meaningless.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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
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My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.
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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We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
Vladimir Nabokov
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If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.
Vladimir Nabokov