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I don't think in any language. I think in images.

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
Images
Language
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - hoping that I like the book as much as he does - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.
Vladimir Nabokov
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It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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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By God, I could make myself bring her that economically halved grapefruit, that sugarless breakfast.
Vladimir Nabokov
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My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
Vladimir Nabokov
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She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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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A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
Vladimir Nabokov
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There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Caress the detail, the divine detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Stirless, I stand at the window, and in the black bowl of the sky glows like a golden drop of honey the mellow moon
Vladimir Nabokov
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I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Ada girl, adored girl, [...] I'm a radiant void. I'm convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended.
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