Quote

What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness -- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.

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
Surprise
Window
Consciousness
Sunlit
Open
Swinging
Night
Marvel
Life
Surprises
Sudden
Landscape

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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I think she always nursed a small mad hope.
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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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Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra-these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known . . . this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.
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A good laugh is the best pesticide.
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Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
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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.
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Do those clowns really believe what they teach?
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A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.
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The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
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Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.
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Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!
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I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.
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A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.
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Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
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All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.
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The compensation for a death sentence is the knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.
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I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.
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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.
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Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
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I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
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