I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.

An active and creative reader is a re-reader.

I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.

Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.

Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.

Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!

She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward first the scepter of my passion.