I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.

Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.

I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.

Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being - not a constant state - that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden.

...and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.

Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?