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The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
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
Translation
Translations
Literal
Useful
Thousand
Times
Paraphrase
Prettiest
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov
Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.
Vladimir Nabokov
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
Vladimir Nabokov
Style and Structure are the essence of a book great ideas are hogwash.
Vladimir Nabokov
Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
Vladimir Nabokov
A good laugh is the best pesticide.
Vladimir Nabokov
Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .
Vladimir Nabokov
Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.
Vladimir Nabokov
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
The square root of I is I.
Vladimir Nabokov
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.
Vladimir Nabokov
Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
Vladimir Nabokov
There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness.
Vladimir Nabokov
Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
Vladimir Nabokov
And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.
Vladimir Nabokov
One is always at home in one's past.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.
Vladimir Nabokov
Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
Vladimir Nabokov
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
Vladimir Nabokov