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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
Artistic
Writers
Derivative
Seem
Versatile
Present
Derivatives
Others
Imitate
Past
Copy
Seems
Originality
Many
Copies

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

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Words without experience are meaningless.
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Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.
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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
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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.
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Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
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Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk.
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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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To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.
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Dear Jesus, do something.
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Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
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And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.
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I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Her lips were like large crimson polyps.
Vladimir Nabokov
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We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble there shall Jane's heart always break.
Vladimir Nabokov
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That swimming, sloping, elusive something about the dark-bluish tint of the iris which seemed still to retain the shadows it had absorbed of ancient, fabulous forests where there were more birds than tigers and more fruit than thorns, and where, in some dappled depth, man's mind had been born.
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Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov
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There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
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I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
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Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons.
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for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.
Vladimir Nabokov