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Mnemosyne, one must admit, has shown herself to be a very careless girl.
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
Careless
Shown
Admit
Girl
Must
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
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Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
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The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
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There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness.
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I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.
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I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
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It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
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If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
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I think it is all a matter of love.
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In this crazy mirror of terror and art a pseudo-quotation made up of obscure Shakespeareanisms (Chapter Three) somehow produces, despite its lack of literal meaning, the blurred diminutive image of the acrobatic performance that so gloriously supplies the bravura ending for the next chapter.
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Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
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We think not in words but in shadows of words.
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A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world.
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And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.
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The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
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All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.
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Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.
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Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
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He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle.
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Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .
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