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The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.

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
Stealing
Silvery
Sea
Lures
Sun
Dissolves
Moon
Robs
Light
Steals
Lure
Thief
Thieves

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The compensation for a death sentence is the knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.
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All colors made me happy: even gray. My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs.
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Genius is finding the invisible link between things.
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...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.
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Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
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In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood.
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It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
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And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.
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…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.
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The square root of I is I.
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My own ultraviolet darling. Lolita
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A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
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Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
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Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
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A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world.
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