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Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
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
Seem
Versatile
Present
Derivatives
Others
Imitate
Past
Copy
Seems
Originality
Many
Copies
Artistic
Writers
Derivative
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
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
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
Vladimir Nabokov
Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
Vladimir Nabokov
I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.
Vladimir Nabokov
The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
Vladimir Nabokov
Caress the detail, the divine detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
Vladimir Nabokov
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
Vladimir Nabokov
Her lips were like large crimson polyps.
Vladimir Nabokov
Mnemosyne, one must admit, has shown herself to be a very careless girl.
Vladimir Nabokov
All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.
Vladimir Nabokov
Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.
Vladimir Nabokov
The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
Vladimir Nabokov
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
And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me-my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing-yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy-yes, happy!
Vladimir Nabokov
Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created it has its fatal flaw.
Vladimir Nabokov
My own ultraviolet darling. Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
Vladimir Nabokov