Followers

26 March 2009

Vladimir Nabokov, 1899 - 1977

*The following passage is not for the general reader, but for the particular idiot who, because he lost a fortune in some crash, thinks he understands me.
My old (since 1917) quarrel with the Soviet dictatorship so wholly unrelated to any question of property. My contempt for the emigre who "hates the Reds" because they "stole" his money and land is complete. The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.

(Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian-born U.S. novelist, poet. Speak, Memory, ch. 3 (1966).)

*“Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.”

*“Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.”

* “To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute”

*“Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.”

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