Vladimir Nabokov Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Defeating racism, tribalism, intolerance and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike.
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My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.
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We have said that Israel has had a very bad history with the United Nations, and whoever cares for himself in Israel distances himself from that Organization.
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The early Billy Joel stuff I fell in love with, like Glass Houses, is a real rock record.
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Every time guns fall into the wrong hands and are used to intimidate, injure, or murder women, it erodes the rights of responsible gun owners everywhere.
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There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken of or written of, though it would be wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.
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The horse carries the rider with power and speed. But the rider controls the horse. Talent carries the artist to great heights with power and speed. But the artist directs his talent. That is the element of 'consciousness', of 'calculation' in the work – or whatever else one chooses to call it.
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The virtue of the market is that it disperses responsibility.
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I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles.
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I am Providence.
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I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.Inaction, no falsifying dreamBetween my hooked head and hooked feet:Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
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If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.
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Soprano, basso, even the contra-alto, Wished him five fathom under the Rialto.
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Nobody sees the same movie. I'm sure there are people who saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and thought 'Finally a gay movie about men who really care about each other. Thank God!' That's not what I saw necessarily - but I don't think any two people see the same movie.
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The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.
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Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative.
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The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.
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What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance the most astounding? That question is this—Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels.
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Writing was in its origin, the voice of an absent person.
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There must be a new world if there is to be any world at all!... These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is Time to make the dullest man consider; and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound?
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I wear sunglasses because of the glare of spotlights. I wear gloves because it is very cold.
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Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values - silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude - able to be harvested by any traveler who visits.
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In that Macondo forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so strong that it was difficult to breathe, secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love in a house where it was almost impossible to sleep because of the noise of the red ants, Aureliano, and Amaranta Úrsula were the only happy beings, and the most happy on the face of the earth.
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Solitude was corrupting me.
