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It is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age-strange, strange are the mishaps of memory.
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
Age
Frame
Memory
Figure
Cherub
Figures
Cherubs
Grow
Darkens
Strange
Suspiciously
Memories
Mishaps
Grows
Prettier
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.
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I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
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My Carmen, I said (I used to call her that sometimes) we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed. ... Because, really, I continued, there is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere, said Lolita.
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Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
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do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
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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.
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The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading
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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.
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Genius is finding the invisible link between things.
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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.
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I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
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Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
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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.
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There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
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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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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.
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One is always at home in one's past.
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I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies - every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost.
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The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
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While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
Vladimir Nabokov