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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.

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
Words
Experience
Also
Live
Without
Things
World
Meaningless
Thoughts

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
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We are most artistically caged.
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Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
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Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.
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for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.
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Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
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while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
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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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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.
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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.
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Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish.
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It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
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Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk.
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The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.
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Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
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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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Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
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I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
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The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading
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There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.
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