Quote

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.

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
Whatever
Damn
Society
Forth
Individual
Group
Art
Importance
Give
Mass
Giving
Reader
Important
Groups
Work
Community
Masses

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
Vladimir Nabokov
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And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.
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I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Literature was not born the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The lost glove is happy.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The tiny madman in his padded cell.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity
Vladimir Nabokov
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Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
Vladimir Nabokov
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if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
Vladimir Nabokov
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There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
Vladimir Nabokov
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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Poor Knight! he really had two periods, the firsta dull man writing broken English, the seconda broken man writing dull English.
Vladimir Nabokov