My students often say, "My roommate read this story and really liked it", and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, "well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something."

I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.

It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.

I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction.

Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

To the west, the Pacific Ocean, which revulses me, for its vastness cannot be fitted into any box.

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