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Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

1899–1977 Russia

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (22 April (O.S. 10 April) 1899 – 2 July 1977) was a Russian-American writer. He wrote his first literary works in Russian, but gained international prominence as a masterly prose stylist for the novels he composed in English; his Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as one of the most important novels of the 20th century.

Russia
Agnostics
Memoirists
Novelists
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Also known as: Nabokov, Nabokov, Vladimir, Pale Fire, Speak, Memory, Speak,Memory

Random Vladimir Nabokov quote

64 quotes

What moment in that gradual decay
Does resurrection choose? What year?
Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?
Are some less lucky, or do all escape?
A syllogism; other men die
But I am not another: therefore I'll not die.

Pale Fire (1962)

I owe my complete restoration to a discovery I made while being treated at that particular very expensive sanatorium. I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on.

A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.

The associative sense of the Russian nozhki (conjuring a pair of small, elegant, high-instepped, slender-ankled lady's feet) is a shade tenderer than the French petits poids; it has not the stodginess of the English 'foot,' large or small, or the mawkishness of the German Fuesschen.

Eugene Onegin: Commentary and Index (1964)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Vladimir Nabokov (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.