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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.
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
Brain
Discerned
Future
Individually
Past
Seductive
Better
Existed
Something
Balanced
Would
Demands
Demand
Perhaps
Concretely
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There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.
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I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.
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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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I should allow only my heart to have imagination and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's personal truth.
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Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
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My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
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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.
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An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
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I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.
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There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.
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It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.
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We are most artistically caged.
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There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.
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The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.
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if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
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