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Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

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The subject may be crude and repulsive. Its expression is artistically modulated and balanced. This is style. This is art. This is the only thing that...more

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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me...more

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A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle...more

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while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

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Perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled......more

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For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, ...more

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The best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style. [Vogue, interview, 1969]

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as if it were a point of honor—which, indeed, a point of art often is.

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A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

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Genius is finding the invisible link between things.

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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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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

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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 b...more

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Vladimir Nabokov“... one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I...more