Vladimir Nabokov Quotes
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Quotes to Explore
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There ought to be more grants that go to people in their late twenties and early thirties. That's a crucial age, although it's very hard to judge who is worth supporting and who is not. Looking back on my own life, I see that was the period when I was closest to giving up as a novelist and when I most needed some encouragement.
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In Kenya, I met wonderful girls; girls who wanted to help their communities. I was with them in their school, listening to their dreams. They still have hope. They want to be doctor and teachers and engineers.
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'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
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The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
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But my patriotism goes for something beyond what we have. We don't have something that I want to die for - anymore.
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My guilty pleasure is I like to watch a lot of HGTV. I really like watching design shows about houses, like extreme homes. Like buying a bridge and turning it into a house or something like that. I really am interested in home design or something like that... architecture.
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I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.
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Controversial means somebody who makes people think. And if you are afraid of people who will be against you, you might as well stay home and do nothing.
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The thing about Moby Dick is that, at heart, it's a very simple plot - there's only one white whale in the ocean. When you're a boy growing up in a hostile home, you imagine it's unique: it's happening only to you.
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I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.
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I love seeing tattoos on 60-year-olds who have had them for 40 years.
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A lot of people see a Nissan ad and they see a finished product in a record store or on iTunes and that's the face of the band.
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I don't watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.
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To resolve problems through negotiation is a very childish approach.
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Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.
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As self-driving cars become more common, there will be a flood of new legal questions.
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Regardless of our ambitions to become part of the E.U., we have to keep in mind that Turkey is also a very strong voice that can represent the needs of our region in wider terms in global platforms.
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Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.
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I've paid my dues. It wasn't overnight success. I went to tons of casting calls and auditions... But I've got to give luck some credit.
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Traditional local advertising is not what retailers want. They want not just for you to see an ad - they want you to come into the store, to be a repeat customer and to spread the word.
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Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real? I remember at the time of the wreck-- people were so kind and helpful and solid. Everyone pretended that our lives until that moment had been every bit as real as the moment itself and that the future must be real too, when the truth was that our reality had been purchased only by Lyell's death. In another hour or so we had all faded out again and gone our dim ways.
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... I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution - not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything.
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It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.
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The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
