A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.

In reading, one should notice and fondle details.

But in my arms she was always Lolita.

I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling

Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .

The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.