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In reading, one should notice and fondle details.

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
Fondle
Notice
Details
Reading
Book

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
Vladimir Nabokov
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If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
Vladimir Nabokov
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Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
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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As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My God died young. Theolatry i found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God but was I free?
Vladimir Nabokov
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Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
Vladimir Nabokov
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All great novels are great fairy tales.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Don't touch me I'll die if you touch me.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Solitude was corrupting me.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.
Vladimir Nabokov
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a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
Vladimir Nabokov
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All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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
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Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My little cup brims with tiddles.
Vladimir Nabokov