Tracing Quotations
T. S. Eliot? W. H. Auden? Vladimir Nabokov? Gloria Goddard? Clement Wood? J. L. Thompson? Tom Congdon? Alan Bennett? Question for Quote Investigator: The name of the major literary figure T. S. Eliot has inspired entertaining wordplay. A bookseller who visited the London headquarters of Eliot’s publisher, Faber and Faber, supposedly emerged with the following …
Continue reading “Palindrome Origin: Was It Eliot’s Toilet I Saw?”
Quotation: “What do you call ‘genius’?” “Well, seeing things others don’t see. Or rather the invisible links between things.” Creator: Vladimir Nabokov, author of “Pale Fire”, “Lolita”, and “Speak, Memory” Context: The lines excerpted above show two characters talking from the 1974 novel “Look at the Harlequins!” by Nabokov. These two lines are often compressed …
Vladimir Nabokov? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov was a consummate prose stylist. When he was a professor teaching his students about literature he apparently shared the following candid opinion: Literature is of no practical value whatsoever. Is this quotation accurate? Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1980 the posthumous book “Lectures …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Literature Is of No Practical Value Whatsoever”
Vladimir Nabokov? Harry B. Smith? Augustus Thomas? George M. Cohan? George Abbott? Steven Spielberg? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Recently, I saw a fascinating quotation about writing that was attributed to the brilliant prose stylist Vladimir Nabokov: The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up …