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It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.
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
Stills
Still
Writing
Ruminating
Much
Singular
Really
Reaction
Length
Reactions
Sitting
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
Vladimir Nabokov
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Vladimir Nabokov
A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
Vladimir Nabokov
The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.
Vladimir Nabokov
The future is but the obsolete in reverse.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.
Vladimir Nabokov
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that offensive is frequently but a synonym for unusual and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.
Vladimir Nabokov
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
Vladimir Nabokov
Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
Vladimir Nabokov
Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
Vladimir Nabokov
As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.
Vladimir Nabokov
There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.
Vladimir Nabokov
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
Vladimir Nabokov
I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.
Vladimir Nabokov
I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.
Vladimir Nabokov
Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
Vladimir Nabokov
The lost glove is happy.
Vladimir Nabokov
