Many accepted authors simply do not exist for me. Their nam… - Vladimir Nabokov

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Many accepted authors simply do not exist for me. Their names are engraved on empty graves, their books are dummies, they are complete nonentities insofar as my taste in reading is concerned. Brecht, Faulkner, Camus, many others, mean absolutely nothing to me, and I must fight a suspicion of conspiracy against my brain when I see blandly accepted as “great literature” by critics and fellow authors Lady Chatterley's copulations or the pretentious nonsense of Mr. Pound, that total fake. I note he has replaced Dr. Schweitzer in some homes.

Vladimir Nabokov

Strong Opinions · March 17, 1990 Verified in 1 source Sign up to see the complete provenance

English

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About Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (22 April (O.S. 10 April) 1899 – 2 July 1977) was a Russian-American writer. He wrote his first literary works in Russian, but gained international prominence as a masterly prose stylist for the novels he composed in English; his Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as one of the most important novels of the 20th century.

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Also Known As

Pen Names: ვლადიმერ სირინი • Vladimir Sirin • Владимир Сирин

Native Name: Владимир Владимирович Набоков

Alternative Names: Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov • Vl. Sirin • Wladimir Nabokoff-Sirin • V. Sirin • Nabokov

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Virginia Woolf James Joyce F. Scott Fitzgerald John Fowles Edgar Allan Poe

Additional quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.

There are few physiques I loathe more than the heavy low-slung pelvis, thick calves and deplorable complexion of the average coed (in whom I see, maybe, the coffin of coarse female flesh within which my nymphets are buried alive).

But that mimosa grove-the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since-until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.

Many accepted authors simply do not exist for me. Their names are engraved on empty graves, their books are dummies, they are complete nonentities in… - Vladimir Nabokov

About Vladimir Nabokov

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Additional quotes by Vladimir Nabokov