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A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing “classical” music; that two, he was doing it “softly”; and that three, “there were not many readers around in summer.” I was there, a one-man multitude.

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing “classical” music; that two, he was doing it “softly”; and that three, “there were not many readers around in summer.” I was there, a one-man multitude.

Approximate author period: c. 1938 AD · modern

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Vladimir Nabokov
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
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Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1938 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1899 to 1977; Wikidata Q36591, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q36591 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 386188; supplied attribution, independently unverified

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