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The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at 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
Writing
Main
Throw
Rocks
Writer
Tree
Jobs
Character

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena - all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
Vladimir Nabokov
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My God died young. Theolatry i found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God but was I free?
Vladimir Nabokov
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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
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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!
Vladimir Nabokov
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A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
Vladimir Nabokov
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We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The tiny madman in his padded cell.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Vladimir Nabokov
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There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called powerful novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.
Vladimir Nabokov