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Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.

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
Measure
Late
Live

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Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
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Mnemosyne, one must admit, has shown herself to be a very careless girl.
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Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.
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I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.
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Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?
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I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.
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A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
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Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
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The tiny madman in his padded cell.
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To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue.
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Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
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As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.
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A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
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Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
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Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future.
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I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
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You lose your immortality when you lose your memory.
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A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.
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Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.
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There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
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