We are most artistically caged.

At a very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it.

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.

Those Eggheadsareterrible Philistines. A realgood head is not oval but round.

Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.

I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.