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.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.

...All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.

Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake", there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.

Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

There is only one real number: one. And love, apparently, is the best exponent of this singularity.