Vladimir Nabokov

(19 votes)   All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(14 votes)   Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(311 votes)   Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as ''nymphets.''

Vladimir Nabokov
1899-1977, Russian-born American Novelist, Poet

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(94 votes)   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
1899-1977, Russian-born American Novelist, Poet

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(79 votes)   The tiny madman in his padded cell.

Vladimir Nabokov
1899-1977, Russian-born American Novelist, Poet

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(76 votes)   A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(26 votes)   Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(25 votes)   Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(24 votes)   Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(23 votes)   I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(22 votes)   It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(22 votes)   Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(20 votes)   The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(19 votes)   Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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(19 votes)   The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

Vladimir Nabokov
American, Novelist Quotes

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