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I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.

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
Shadow
Windowpane
Azure
Slain
False

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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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An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
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My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.
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And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.
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Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
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Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.
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I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.
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Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
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Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.
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Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
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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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I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
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The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
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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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Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
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A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
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Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.
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