Don’t cry, I’m sorry to have deceived you so much, but that’s how life is.
I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don’t seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
It’s a pity one can’t imagine what one can’t compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.
Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.
While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life’s full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness – that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.
I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.
You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after death was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me.
Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.
No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.
My characters are galley slaves.
At a very early stage of the novel’s development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it.
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist.
When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher – “hoping that I like the book as much as he does” – I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.
There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch – mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called “powerful” novel – full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.
I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic’s bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.