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I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
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
Dream
Inflicting
Vienna
Umbrella
Elderly
Gentleman
Personality
Dreams
Upon
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
Vladimir Nabokov
I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais!
Vladimir Nabokov
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra-these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known . . . this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.
Vladimir Nabokov
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
Vladimir Nabokov
Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.
Vladimir Nabokov
My little cup brims with tiddles.
Vladimir Nabokov
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Vladimir Nabokov
Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
Vladimir Nabokov
There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.
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
...in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.
Vladimir Nabokov
Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created it has its fatal flaw.
Vladimir Nabokov
Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov
I don't think in any language. I think in images.
Vladimir Nabokov
Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.
Vladimir Nabokov
Style and Structure are the essence of a book great ideas are hogwash.
Vladimir Nabokov