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Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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
Insubordination
Purest
Thrive
Curiosity
Form
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
Vladimir Nabokov
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
Vladimir Nabokov
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
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
Vladimir Nabokov
Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.
Vladimir Nabokov
I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.
Vladimir Nabokov
Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.
Vladimir Nabokov
My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.
Vladimir Nabokov
There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
Vladimir Nabokov
I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais!
Vladimir Nabokov
I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.
Vladimir Nabokov
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.
Vladimir Nabokov
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
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
Solitude was corrupting me.
Vladimir Nabokov
I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.
Vladimir Nabokov
