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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.

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
Another
Creatures
Remind
Hunt
Live
Pay
Precious
Hunts
Play
Name
Chess
Tribute
Gauzy
Country
Names
Flying
Metals
Gauze
Make
Possible
Wings
Languages
Stravinsky
Life
Known
Active
Butterfly
Trader
Language
Carry
Russian
Snares
Science
Plant
Plants
Traders

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My Carmen, I said (I used to call her that sometimes) we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed. ... Because, really, I continued, there is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere, said Lolita.
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While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
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Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist.
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Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
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You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
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Solitude was corrupting me.
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It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
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And the rest is rust and stardust.
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I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.
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if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.
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...for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.
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And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.
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A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.
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Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity
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My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
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Imagine me I shall not exist if you do not imagine me try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity let's even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.
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My God died young. Theolatry i found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God but was I free?
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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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A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.
Vladimir Nabokov