I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.

I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.

Genius is finding the invisible link between things.

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.

And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.

Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.