I demanded of my students the passion of science and the patience of poetry

During my years of teaching literature at Cornell and elsewhere I demanded of my students the passion of science and the patience of poetry. As an artist and scholar I prefer the specific detail to the generalization, images to ideas, obscure facts to clear symbols, and the discovered wild fruit to the synthetic jam.

Vladimir Nabokov (Strong opinions)

https://thenabokovian.org/life

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