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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.
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
Make
Dragged
Like
Devoid
Idleness
Previous
Sluggishly
Bored
Enchanting
Days
Insipid
Even
Dreamy
Kind
Expectancy
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
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I think it is all a matter of love.
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All great novels are great fairy tales.
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Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
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Her lips were like large crimson polyps.
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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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I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.
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The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
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There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called powerful novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
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A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.
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There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
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It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.
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I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.
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Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.
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My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.
Vladimir Nabokov
A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.
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I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with.
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Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
Vladimir Nabokov
We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.
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I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
Vladimir Nabokov