Quote

Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.

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
Find
Mental
Heaviest
World
Genius
Nightly
Simply
Rituals
Humanity
Fraternity
Sleep
Betrayal
Cannot
Ritual
Crudest
Used
Torture
Moronic
Reason
Dues
Debasing

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Her lips were like large crimson polyps.
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Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
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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.
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It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.
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I have never seen a more lucid, more lonely, better balanced mad mind than mine.
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Genius is finding the invisible link between things.
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Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
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The future is but the obsolete in reverse.
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The lost glove is happy.
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Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.
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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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Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
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If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.
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