Vladimir Nabokov Quotes
There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.
Quotes to Explore
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As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
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When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.
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I made up 'Badlands'; anything I say, goes. I came to realize I was materializing a metaphor for my mental state.
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I was very influenced by movies; I was very influenced by a world that had a sense of dream.
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Montenegro belongs to a rare number of countries that have managed to make progress on every internationally recognisable indicator.
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It's very important that every movie I do makes money because I want the people that had the faith in me to get their money back.
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Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of achieving the standards I'd set myself and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
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I felt I had to solve everyone's problems.
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I was never one to sit down and write a plan for my future.
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I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun.
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I married him because he told me it was the only way he could protect me. If we were just manager and client, my family could do whatever they wanted to get me back, but if I was his wife, they couldn't.
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There's one thing that I like about Rome that was stated by Napoleon: that from sublime to pathetic is only one step away. And in Rome there's a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic.
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The IT bubble is the IT bubble, and of course, we became a company that contracted dramatically in 2001 and 2002: we basically came down by 45,000 people - a dramatic ramp-down.
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I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.
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I consider The O.C. as my college. It was four years and I made friends who I'll have forever.
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There are so many figures in our history that did not believe they could make a change, and they did.
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I'm a warrior for the middle class.
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A 'conservative believer' must be someone who believes that Jesus was truly human as well as truly divine.
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Give him enough rope and he will hang himself.
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Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.
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The greatest of all fools is the proud fool--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
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The part of [Oscar] Wilde was exceptionally important to me; the man, his achievements, his wisdom, but his downfall, his disgrace and the tragic and bitter end to it have always fascinated, appalled and attracted me since childhood. It was he who first in some measure vindicated my sexuality.
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How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly he spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws!
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There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.
