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a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.
Vladimir Nabokov -
I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
Vladimir Nabokov -
All religions are based on obsolete terminology.
Vladimir Nabokov -
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
Vladimir Nabokov -
While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
Vladimir Nabokov -
Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.
Vladimir Nabokov -
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
Vladimir Nabokov -
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
Vladimir Nabokov -
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
Vladimir Nabokov -
Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
Vladimir Nabokov -
I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov -
All colors made me happy: even gray. My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs.
Vladimir Nabokov
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I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.
Vladimir Nabokov -
No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
Vladimir Nabokov -
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
Vladimir Nabokov -
No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.
Vladimir Nabokov -
I should allow only my heart to have imagination; and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's personal truth.
Vladimir Nabokov -
Perhaps if the year was 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.
Vladimir Nabokov -
Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
Vladimir Nabokov -
I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.
Vladimir Nabokov -
Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.
Vladimir Nabokov