#Quote
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.
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More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.
The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.
Genius is finding the invisible link between things.
I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
