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I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.

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
Deny
Reality
Cannot
Right
Something
Disobey

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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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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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.
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I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
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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.
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Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
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Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
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I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with.
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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.
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At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.
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Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
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Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
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Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
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Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.
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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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Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
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No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.
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for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.
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Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.
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I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
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Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
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