Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.

We think not in words but in shadows of words.

Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.

The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.