Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.

I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.

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

Pnin slowly walked under solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended the destinies of the quick.

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

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

I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.