My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.

The lost glove is happy.

Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you love me thus!

I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust