Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?

Much in our lives is chance.

I wrote a novel called "Blonde," which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.