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We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
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
Fate
Alienate
Hasten
Fates
Intended
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
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The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
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At a very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it.
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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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...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.
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There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
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Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
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A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
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Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
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I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
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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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Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
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The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
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I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.
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The future is but the obsolete in reverse.
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What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness -- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.
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I have never seen a more lucid, more lonely, better balanced mad mind than mine.
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There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.
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There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
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The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.
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