Memory overshadows the present and dims the future "into something thicker than its usual pea soup."

Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .

At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.

Words without experience are meaningless.

I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).