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Book: Vera
Quotes of Book: Vera
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  1. Stacy Schiff _ Vera

    Never had he sounded so much like one of his characters, brought down by his passion, unable to escape his own private abyss, heartrendingly separated from his own self-image
    book-quote

  2. Stacy Schiff _ Vera

    Véra assumed her married name almost as a stage name; rarely has matrimony so much represented a profession. It was one of the ironies of the life that – born at a time and place where women could and did lay claim to all kinds of ambitions – she should elevate the role of wife to a high art. {…} Traditionally, a man changes his name and braces himself for fame; a woman changes hers and passes into oblivion. This was not to be Véra's case, although she did gather her married name around her like a cloak, which she occasionally opened to startling effect. She would never be forced to make a woman's historic choice between love and work. Nor would Verochka, as Vladimir called her, squander any of her professional training, though as it happened her husband would be the direct {and sole} beneficiary of that expertise.
    book-quotemarriagename-change

  3. Stacy Schiff _ Vera

    Nabokov complained he was afflicted with total recall, an affliction of which he could be miraculously cured by the presence of a biographer.
    book-quote

  4. Stacy Schiff _ Vera

    They were inculcated with a firm sense of noblesse oblige, as with a respect for hierarchy; the Slonim girls knew well how to decode a social situation, and what they could rightfully expect from one. In part these seemed to be survival tactics for living in an uncertain time.
    book-quote

  5. Stacy Schiff _ Vera

    Dimitri had driven his mother back to Montreux from the Lausanne hospital at dusk on July 2, in his blue Ferrari, on the last day of his father's life. Véra had sat silently for a few minutes and then uttered the one desperate line Dimitri ever heard escape her lips, "Let's rent an airplane and crash.
    book-quotemourning

  6. Stacy Schiff _ Vera

    Aikhenvald saw Véra as a fearless guide to Vladimir on "the poetic path." She was on every count his champion. The wife of another émigré writer phrased it differently: "Everyone in the Russian community knew who and what you meant when you said 'Verochka.' It meant a boxer who went into the fight and hit and hit.
    book-quotewingman

  7. Stacy Schiff _ Vera

    Briefly {Vladimir Nabokov} caught the {Superman} fever too, composing a poem, now lost, on the the Man of Steel's wedding night.
    book-quotesupermanrussian-literaturevladimir-nabokov
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