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

Vladimir Nabokov

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Vladimir Nabokov
Age: 77 †
Born: 1899
Born: January 1
Died: 1977
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Chess Composer
Chess Player
Journalist
Lepidopterist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
St. Petersburg
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Vladimir Sirin
Vl. Sirin
Wladimir Nabokoff-Sirin
V. Sirin
Nothing
Revives
Revive
Associated
Scent
Smell
Completely
Nature
Past

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...in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.
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Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
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I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.
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Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.
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Dear Jesus, do something.
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Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
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The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
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It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.
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There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
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Don't touch me I'll die if you touch me.
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Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
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Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
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And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.
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The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
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Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
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Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.
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Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .
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Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .
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