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Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be

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
Supposed
Supremely
Seem
Contains
Greatest
Russian
Seeing
Odd
Books
Warmth
Seems
Abstract
May
Chess
Book
Defense
Diffuses

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Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk.
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I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.
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We are most artistically caged.
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Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
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By God, I could make myself bring her that economically halved grapefruit, that sugarless breakfast.
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There was no Lo to behold.
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No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.
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There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
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Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
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Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.
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An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
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Don't touch me I'll die if you touch me.
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Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
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Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
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Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.
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Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
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Curiously enough, one cannot read a book one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
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Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra-these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known . . . this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.
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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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Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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