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We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.

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
Hasten
Fates
Intended
Fate
Alienate

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By God, I could make myself bring her that economically halved grapefruit, that sugarless breakfast.
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My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.
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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
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Don't touch me I'll die if you touch me.
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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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Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.
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In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood.
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I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
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I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with.
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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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My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.
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The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.
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I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
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