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

Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

Topics: Magic Quotes

Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm...

Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm...

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory,...

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory,...

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an...

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an...

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the...

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the...

Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received...

Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received...

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order...

Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order...

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal...

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal...

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but...

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but...

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to...

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to...

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something...

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something...

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

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

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

I confess, I do not believe in time.

I confess, I do not believe in time.

Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.

Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in...

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in...