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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As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.
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Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
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I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.
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The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.
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Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .
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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.
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And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.
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I think she always nursed a small mad hope.
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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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She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
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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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The tiny madman in his padded cell.
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There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
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Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
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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.
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A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.
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Mnemosyne, one must admit, has shown herself to be a very careless girl.
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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!
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All religions are based on obsolete terminology.
Vladimir Nabokov