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And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me-my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing-yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy-yes, happy!

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
Really
Remarkable
Erudition
Things
Fantasy
Appreciates
Men
Gift
Absorbing
Appreciate
Gaze
Bits
Foul
Happy
Cheap
Doe
Swear
Matter
Literary

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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No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
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Don't touch me I'll die if you touch me.
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I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
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Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
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…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.
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Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious it has been set free.
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I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.
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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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The social or economic structure of the ideal state is of little concern to me. My desires are modest. Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size. No torture and no executions. No music, except coming through earphones, or played in theaters. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of art.
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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.
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I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.
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I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.
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I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.
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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.
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while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
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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.
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You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
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I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
Vladimir Nabokov