And this is the only immortality you and i may share, my Lolita.

Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.

Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.

Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.

I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.

A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.

The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.