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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 people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable."
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"Jeez, Hazel," Percy said, "tell your horse to watch his language."Hazel tried not to laugh. "What did he say?""With the cussing removed? He said he can get us to the top."Frank looked incredulous. "I thought the horse couldn't fly!"This time Arion whinnied so angrily, even Hazel could guess he was cursing."Dude," Percy told the horse, "I've gotten suspended for saying less than that..."

"Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing."

"Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin."

"It is ironic that the only thing separating 'friend' from 'fiend' - is a single letter."

"Chameleonesque, hobbitish, unicorned, stompled, selfishism, and unwakeable may not be real words, but you do know what they mean."
Explore more quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."

"There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity."

"The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind."
Mind,

"Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much."
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