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I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth.

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
Choice
Fantasy
Fantasies
Matter
Numbers
Matters
Emissions
Looks
Food
Various
Hobbies
Important
Animal
Supposed
Nostalgia
Choices
Animals
Companion
Fear
Changes
Unknown
Quiz
Program
Forth
Nocturnal
Also
Number
Radio
Companions
Look

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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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Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.
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I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me.
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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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in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.
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Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!
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Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.
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I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.
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Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
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Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
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He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.
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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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Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
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Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
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Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
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A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
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Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
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To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue.
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