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Although I do not care for the slogan art for art's sake, there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.

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
Art
Although
Care
Sake
Work
Importance
Safe
Fiction
Question
Slogan
Social
Rust
Makes
Slogans

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
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Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.
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I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.
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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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I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
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The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My Carmen, I said (I used to call her that sometimes) we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed. ... Because, really, I continued, there is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere, said Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Look at this tangle of thorns.
Vladimir Nabokov
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It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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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Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.
Vladimir Nabokov
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There is only one school of literature - that of talent.
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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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