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.

I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.

I could also distinguish the glint of a special puddle (the one Krug had somehow perceived through the layer of his own life), an oblong puddle invariably acquiring the same form after every shower because of the constant spatulate shape of a depression in the ground. Possibly something of the kind may be said to occur in regard to the imprint we leave in the intimate texture of space. Twang. A good night for nothing.

You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.

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