My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.

We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.

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 talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.

Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!

I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.