To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase "sincere and simple" — "Flaubert writes with a style which is always simple and sincere" — under the impression that this was the greatest compliment payable to prose or poetry. When I struck the phrase out, which I did with such rage that it ripped the paper, the student complained that this was what teachers had always taught him: "Art is simple, art is sincere." Someday I must trace this vulgar absurdity to its source. A schoolmarm in Ohio? A progressive ass in New York? Because, of course, art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.


p. 32. - Strong Opinions (1973)

Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase sincere and simple — Flaubert writes with a...

To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase sincere and simple — Flaubert writes with a...

To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase sincere and simple — Flaubert writes with a...

To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase sincere and simple — Flaubert writes with a...