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Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!

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
Insubordination
Invent
Reality
Play
World

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac) and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as nymphets.
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I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
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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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To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue.
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The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
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Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
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I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with.
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All religions are based on obsolete terminology.
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Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.
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A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.
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Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
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There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness.
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My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
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I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?
Vladimir Nabokov
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Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
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We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.
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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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And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.
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