Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?

Pnin slowly walked under solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended the destinies of the quick.

I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.

Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake", there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.

Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.

And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.