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This irritated or puzzled such students of literature and their professors as were accustomed to ‘serious’ courses replete with ‘trends ’ and ‘schools...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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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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I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of h...more

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The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

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And speaking of this wonderful machine:[840] I’m puzzled by the difference b

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The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writ...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

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In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys — literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read...more

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Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain — the brain, that stomach ...more

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There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic ...more

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... she had painted her lips and was holding in her hollowed hands a beautiful, banal, Eden-red apple.

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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 ma...more

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We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally a...more

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We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live ...more