Not a single newspaper noted Nabokov's preferred date. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, physicist, 1904.
Journalists often introduce an article using a Nabokov quotation for substance or color.
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style' says Nabokov's Humbert Humbert. Will Self's first novel My Idea of Fun . The simultaneous deaths of Fellini and Pheonix were nothing if not stylish. Nabokov said there was no such thing as reading a classic once. The same with great paintings, great music, operas and buildings.