The popular culture says . . . Do what you do, your life is predestined, like the installment plan on your house. There's not much you can do about it. Make your payments, live it, get sick, die, don't make any trouble. It is the Master Charge of destiny. Try to get your high credit rating.

Chance was to work in the garden, where he would care for plants and grasses and trees which grew there peacefully. He would be as one on them: quiet, open hearted in the sunshine and heavy when it rained.

I do like to live in other people's homes. I enjoy being a guest. I am an inexpensive guest. When one lives in another's home he can enter into the psychic kingdom of that person.

In London, the weather would affect me negatively. I react strongly to light. If it is cloudy and raining, there are clouds and rain in my soul.

[Nabokov's] language is made visible . . . like a veil or transparent curtain. You cannot help seeing the curtain as you peek into the intimate rooms behind.

I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.