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

In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved

These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.

Like all virtuous people he imagines he must speak the truth.

Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.