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cdf7aeb
|
He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.
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sleep
pnin
wrist
left-handed
vladimir-nabokov
insomnia
left
insomniac
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
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aae83bd
|
My little cup brims with tiddles.
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|
lolita
vladimir-nabokov
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
e18ebfc
|
"..."offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual"..." --
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lolita
vladimir-nabokov
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
9d850b7
|
I could not kill , of course, as some have thought. You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
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|
love
love-at-last-sight
lolita
vladimir-nabokov
love-you-forever
love-at-first-sight
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
0ad3375
|
Your voice, through the beelike hum, was remote and anxious. It kept sliding into the distance and vanishing. I spoke to you with tightly shut eyes, and felt like crying. My love for you was the throbbing, welling warmth of tears. That is exactly how I imagined paradise: silence and tears, and the warm silk of your knees. This you could not comprehend.
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|
love
vladimir-nabokov
paradise
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
1112bfa
|
"Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet. Age: five thousand three hundred days. Profession: none, or "starlet". Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze? Why are you hiding, darling? (I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze, I cannot get out, said the starling)." --
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|
vladimir-nabokov
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
0ee66d1
|
I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them.
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|
fate
shakespeare
literature
friends
literary-references
lolita
vladimir-nabokov
emma-bovary
madame-bovary
gustave-flaubert
king-lear
expectations
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
9d4262d
|
One last word,' I said in my horrible careful English, 'are you quite, quite sure that--well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow, but--well--some day, any day, you will not come to live with me? I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope' 'No,' she said smiling, 'no.' 'It would have made all the difference,' said Humbert Humbert. Then I pulled out my automatic-I mean, this is the kind of fool thing a reader might suppose I did. It never even occurred to me to do it.
|
|
lolita
vladimir-nabokov
proposal
sad
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
041fb7f
|
Briefly (Vladimir Nabokov) caught the (Superman) fever too, composing a poem, now lost, on the the Man of Steel's wedding night.
|
|
vladimir-nabokov
russian-literature
superman
superheroes
|
Stacy Schiff |
|
35ca3af
|
"For some reason, I kept seeing it--it trembled and silkily glowed on my damp retina--a radiant child of twelve, sitting on a threshold, "pinging" pebbles at an empty can."
|
|
vladimir-nabokov
sad
memory
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
f9b5c5b
|
The cup-sized breasts of that twenty-four year old impatient beauty seemed a dozen years younger than she, with those pale squinty nipples and firm form.
|
|
the-original-of-laura
vladimir-nabokov
|
Vladimir Nabokov |