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I confess, I do not believe in time.

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
Time
Confess
Believe

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The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
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There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.
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How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!
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There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called powerful novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
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Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.
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I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
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Solitude was corrupting me.
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My Carmen, I said (I used to call her that sometimes) we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed. ... Because, really, I continued, there is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere, said Lolita.
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And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.
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I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.
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a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
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And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear. I swear that I am happy...What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me-my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift...I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing-yes, really absorbing! ... I am happy-yes, happy!
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The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
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Imagine me I shall not exist if you do not imagine me try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity let's even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.
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Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
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I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
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We think not in words but in shadows of words.
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