The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .

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.

My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.

The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.