A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

I could also distinguish the glint of a special puddle (the one Krug had somehow perceived through the layer of his own life), an oblong puddle invariably acquiring the same form after every shower because of the constant spatulate shape of a depression in the ground. Possibly something of the kind may be said to occur in regard to the imprint we leave in the intimate texture of space. Twang. A good night for nothing.

I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.

Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.

As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.