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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
Useful
Thousand
Times
Paraphrase
Prettiest
Translation
Translations
Literal

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov
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We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
Vladimir Nabokov
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The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
Vladimir Nabokov
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The lost glove is happy.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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A good laugh is the best pesticide.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.
Vladimir Nabokov
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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.
Vladimir Nabokov