I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.

There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.

I cannot help feeling there is something essentially wrong about love. Friends may quarrel or drift apart, close relations too, but there is not this pang, this pathos, this fatality which clings to love. Friendship never has that doomed look. Why, what is the matter? I have not stopped loving you, but because I cannot go on kissing your dim dear face, we must part, we must part.

Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.