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Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.

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
Every
Tempts
Pens
Sheep
Readers
Reader
Writing

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.
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I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
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A good laugh is the best pesticide.
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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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...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.
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Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
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My characters are galley slaves.
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Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
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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.
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Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.
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Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
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My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.
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I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
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Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
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Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
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And the rest is rust and stardust.
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Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.
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I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
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I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with.
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Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created it has its fatal flaw.
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