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Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.

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
Comic
Letters
Divides
Letter
Cosmic

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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...All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.
Vladimir Nabokov
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...for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.
Vladimir Nabokov
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As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I have never seen a more lucid, more lonely, better balanced mad mind than mine.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Curiously enough, one cannot read a book one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.
Vladimir Nabokov
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It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Mnemosyne, one must admit, has shown herself to be a very careless girl.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.
Vladimir Nabokov
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do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
Vladimir Nabokov
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I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
Vladimir Nabokov