Vladimir Nabokov Quotes
There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
Quotes to Explore
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Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.
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I firmly believe that the Constitution is the most powerful challenge to illiberal tendencies. If the Constitution is followed in letter and spirit and if the laws are made in the spirit in which Constitution was made, liberties can indeed be protected.
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Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
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The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.
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I always wanted to be a singer, and so, when I was 5 years old, I started acting classes so I could be a better performer. I wanted to have a powerful voice so I could be heard.
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The Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea helped us resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable blockade of the United States, the most powerful empire ever to exist.
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As we get used to women in power, we are likely to discover that they behave much like powerful men - vain, entitled, always looking for more.
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The economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper, making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating economic policies.
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The air is dirty because of the electricity monopolists. They have powerful money lobbyists.
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When people connect to my work, it makes me feel great. A lot of that stuff is really deep, and when I play something and people feel what I feel, and use it in important situations in their lives, like at weddings or funerals, that's so powerful. It means I can connect with them on an important level.
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You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'
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'Tryin' to Get the Feeling' has been a revelation. I'd forgotten how powerful that was. I'd forgotten how deep I can crawl into that one, and maybe because I'm older it means even more.
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It's amazing to think how powerful of a force optimism and hope can be. It's the thing that saves me. I believed that I lived in the greatest country in the world. I still believe that, and consequently, I believed that I had a chance, even though things around me were absolutely crazy and difficult.
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Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
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I didn't invent satire. I didn't come up with it. And it will continue to be a very powerful tool to disrupt political taboos and social taboos and religious taboos, because those taboos are always used to control and to curb people's way of creativity and thinking, by making them feel guilty because they want to make a change.
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As philanthropists, the most powerful legacy we can create is one that keeps on giving - through our children.
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That's what everyone said attracted them to Lantana - I call it an adult mystery, because it's not a thriller in the sense of that other way, but it is a mystery.
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The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.
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I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.
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There's a whole lot of songs that men just can't do. The words are from another time and represent too much of an emotional commitment, whereas women can say that because of who they are.
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I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstorm realize. That light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment - perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depth of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything. All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been.
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Each is responsible for his own actions.
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There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
