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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

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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
Makes
Enchanter
Three
Predominates
Writing
Combines
Storyteller
Majors
Major
Writer
Teacher

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There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called powerful novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
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Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
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She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.
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I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.
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You lose your immortality when you lose your memory.
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I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.
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Although I do not care for the slogan art for art's sake, there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.
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The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition
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I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
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Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods, appear to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.
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No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
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All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.
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Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.
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It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.
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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.
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Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.
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A toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection.
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Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.
Vladimir Nabokov