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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My father had a flourishing business as a publisher in North India.
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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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My canvas soothes me into forgetfulness of the scene of turmoil and folly - and worse - of the scene around me. Every gleam of sunshine is blighted to me in the art at least. Can it therefore be wondered at that I paint continual storms? 'Tempest o'er tempest roll'd' - still the 'darkness' is majestic.
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Love is everywhere, but if our eyes aren't open to see it, we miss out. Who among us hasn't missed out on love because we were looking for it in one package and it came in another? Our problem is rarely a lack of love so much as a mental block to our awareness of its presence.*
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I had four combat tours, and I never saw death on a scale like I saw in Haiti. A quarter-million people lost their lives.
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But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuity; ay me, that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head; both Death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in me all Paradise Lost Posterity stands cursed: fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons; O were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!
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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.
