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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

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Famous Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

“After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what I'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already, that in fact I would see them plainly if I looked closer, but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.”

IfsKnowsFeelsWritingMindFirstsKindFactsInspirationWaitingProcessNovelGoes OnDevelopmentPaperTasksDetailsRecognitionGentleShock
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.”

IfsKnowsLifeCountryPlayNamesLanguagePayKnownCreaturesWingsPlantActiveChessFlyingMetalsButterflyHuntsTributeTradersSnaresStravinskyPrecious Metal
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being - not a constant state - that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden.”

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Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.... My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French. At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts.... In these circumstances nobody should ask me to submit to an interview if by "interview" a chat between two normal human beings is implied.”

PeopleIfsThinkingShouldWritingHumansChildrenLongTwoStoriesAsksSpeakCausesHuman BeingsPartyGeniusCircumstancesNormalAnxietyDistanceSentencesAsk MeInterviewsNativeSubmitTelephonesPatheticDistinguishedGood StoryLong DistanceImpliedSocial AnxietyInsert
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some 'future' events may be linked to others, O.K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.”

IfsMayPersonsDoeHandsCausesDestinyEffectsMissingEventsActivityDirectBreathsAffairCrowdsChainsNecksLinksLinkedScopeSequenceCause And EffectInterferenceFuture Events
Book:Transparent things: a novel
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“If he failed the first time he took his driver's licence test, it was mainly because he started an argument with the examiner in an ill-timed effort to prove that nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled. He was more circumspect the next time, and passed.”

IfsFirstsSoulLightNextEffortDevelopmentProveCreaturesFirst TimeRedArgumentTestsIllRationalDriversNext TimeStoppingHumiliatingReflexesConditionalRed Lights
Book:Pnin
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“I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.”

IfsKnowsMenMayEndsFilmLife IsDiesSpaceWonderfulEgoFleshLandscapeCharacteristicsCommunionTravelerSurroundingsEnvelopesHelmet
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“Perhaps if the year was 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer.”

IfsWayWantYearsMightPastUsedClassMiddleScientistErasGentlePoisonMiddle ClassKillersHollowPalaces
Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
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“Have you ever happened, reader, to feel that subtle sorrow of parting with an unloved abode? The heart does not break, as it does in parting with dear objects. The humid gaze does not wander around holding back a tear, as if it wished to carry away in it a trembling reflection of the abandoned spot; but in the best corner of our hearts we feel pity for the things which we did not bring to life with our breath, which we hardly noticed and are now leaving forever. This already dead iventory will not be resurrected in one's memory.”

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Book:The Gift
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“Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsMeanLittlesLongTogetherDiesOur LivesShareMiddleTongueLovelyLittle ThingsLiliesDoveVelvetLingeringLife Together
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.”

IfsKnowsWritingStillsPastMotherThreeMemoriesSunStyleSummerDiedBottomAccidentsGoldenObservationHillsPocketsWarmthFreakLightningInfancyDuskSuspendedPicnicsRemnantsMother DiedFurryDellPhotogenicMidges
Book:Lolita
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