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Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.

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
Late
Live
Measure

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
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How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!
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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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Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.
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if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
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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Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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
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My little cup brims with tiddles.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
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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We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!
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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in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.
Vladimir Nabokov